Time is the only thing that every single person has equality in. We don’t have equal resources, money, education and contacts. Everything in life is unfairly distributed, except for time. Meaning; it’s the one thing you can control to give you the edge.

Imagine improving your productivity by more than double?

In this article we will unpack the 3 key time management techniques that the coaches at Change Partners use to coach some of the most successful businessmen and women across the the continent.

1. The Sunday Ritual (planning saves execution)

Research indicates that planning your week ahead can have serious time saving ramifications.

How much exactly?

It’s estimated that just 10 minutes of planning can save 1 hour in execution.

It seems that planning takes time, but in truth, not planning takes even more time. The question is how do you get started? The Change Partners coaches have formulated an incredible habitual practice that is tremendously popular with senior executives, called Sunday reviews.

Sunday reviews are two-fold. 30 minutes dedicated to reflecting on the past week’s wins and 1 hour dedicated to planning your week. Why does this give the advantage? 1 hour of planning can equal 6 hours of saved execution time. This gives high performers an additional 5 hours per week. Over a month period, the time savings are 20 hours. And over a year, 260 hours saved.

The high performer is getting an additional 260 hours per year because of planning. Time management, it’s not just a good idea. It’s the different between ordinary and extraordinary. All you need is that little extra.

2. Prioritise with meaning

People always make time for things that are important, which means? If you aren’t getting something done, it’s either not important enough (which means you should drop it) or you need to change your association to it until it becomes important enough… because then it’s easy to execute.

For instance, losing weight is one of the most common and most failed new years resolution, why? Because people want it, but they don’t want it bad enough to go to the gym. The gym is good for me, but the couch, that is relaxing and comfortable. Path of least resistant states that people more often tend to do what is easy, unless what they want to do will bring them great joy and fulfilment.

You have a choice, either change your goal and stop wasting time “trying” to lose weight. Or, change the association you have with losing weight. Make sure that it is something that you obsess over. Find 100 reasons why you MUST lose weight. Then find another 100. Lastly, find 200 if you can! The more reasons will make this goal of higher importance. We always have time for the things that are most important to us.

3. Measure your Return on Time

If you don’t know where your time is invested, then how can you improve your time management. For instance, if you know that every week you are investing over 4 hours to answering calls, you can decide if that is good or not. Perhaps you can get an assistant in who manages the calls from now on. You’ve bought back 4 hours of your time.

You need to understand what the best use of your time is. If answering calls is a low value activity, then delegate it.

Which would you choose: answering a call which equates to R200 per hour of your time (ROT), OR hosting an investor meeting which equates to R5000 per hour? It’s a no brainer hey? You would go for the meeting. You can hire someone to answer calls for R200 per hour and focus more time and energy into building your business, meeting with key shareholders or traveling with your family.

“Don’t let time rule your life, rule time and you will rule your life. I’m truly thankful for Change Partners and their wonderfully diverse coaching group who brought stability and structure to our organisation. Time is finally on our side.” – Change Partner client.

Upskilling your Team’s Time Management Skills

We know the importance of time management and have seen the impact it has on organizations when. That’s why we’ve created open and in-house group coaching programmes to upskill your teams on the principles of time management.

Talk to us to find out how we can assist your organization make the most of it’s time.