Stopping Time Robbers

As a business coach, I tend to focus a lot of my advice on time. As Leonard Bernstein notoriously said “To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.” I find my clients biggest frustration is getting everything done that they plan for the week.

To some this may sound familiar, planning more in a week than actually possible or, in many other cases you’ve allowed yourself to be subjected to time robbers. Unfortunately through coaching I have come to realise what time robbers are, they are the people or the things that distract us from achieving what we set out to initially do.

These can be anything like customers dropping in for a chat, fixing mistakes made by your team, dealing with unimportant phone calls, completing personal tasks in work time etc… So, my input, how can you deal with the time robbers in your life?

Firstly, you must identify what and who the time robbers are in your life. Then you must develop strategies for dealing with these robbers and commit to implementing strategies to get you back on track to achieving what you set out to originally do.

What you can do:

1. Grab a blank sheet of paper and on the left hand side list the top 10 time robbers in your life.
2. Look back over your list and visualize what life will be like when these time robbers are out of your life.
3. Then on the right hand side of your list write down possible strategies for dealing with your time robbers.
4. Finally, commit to dealing with your time robbers straight away. This commitment is the key to really regaining control over your time.

This is a short term strategy with long term benefits, dealing with your time robbers will dramatically minimalize the stress you feel with completing day to day tasks.  

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