Have you ever had your day hijacked by time bandits?
I like to fill a good part of my days with activities that are not urgent but important. When I honor this plan I’m catapulted to “the zone”…where the hours melt by and I’m consumed by deep feelings of satisfaction, doing tasks that really matter to me, like creating better coaching tools, building on my skills as a coach and talking to new people about problems I can help them solve!
Back in the days when this wasn’t happening – I did a little exercise called a “time audit”, where I tracked my days in 15 minute intervals for a week to see what I was really doing and how closely it met with what I had planned. It was pretty obvious I was allowing “time bandits” too much access, and it was even more sobering to pull off their masks and see they were simply me making poor choices. Distracting myself with too much TV and internet or attending meetings I didn’t need to be at or stretching phone calls out longer than they needed to be.
Next time you feel like your day has been hijacked – take a closer look at what really happened and really own it!
Clint Best is a business coach and the founder of Kaizen Business Coaching in Kelowna, BC. Clint has been guiding forward thinking business owners through change and growth since 2002.
