Well, every four years, their wish is granted and the universe delivers a whole extra day for them to do with as they wish.  February the 29th is 24 hours, 1440 minutes or a massive 86,400 seconds.  If you really want to know the significance of this opportunity, just stand staring into someone’s eyes for 60 seconds and see how slowly the time goes by.

Of course I am stating the obvious.  Yes, we have an extra day in a leap year, but how many of us actually make full use of it?  The challenge is that our calendar and busy schedules mean that the extra day just gets absorbed and we hardly notice it.  It reminds me of when my Mum gave up smoking.  Initially, she put the money that she had spent on cigarettes into a personal spending fund to motivate her to kick the habit and within 12 months she had been able to fund a new wardrobe of clothes, a hi-fi system and one of those new microwave ovens.  (She used to smoke a lot!)  However, at the end of year one, she decided to just put the money back into the general living pot and guess what?  It just disappeared!  She didn’t feel any better off and even began to wonder how she had been able to afford to smoke in the first place.

An extra day in the year works the same way.  Most of us could probably wonder how we manage with just 365 days?

In many ways, the appearance of an extra day in the calendar every four years, serves as a good reminder that we can easily let many days pass by without fully grasping the opportunity that each new day brings.  The secret to mastering time is not rocket science.  Getting the most out of every day means spending as much of that time as possible on the things that motivate you.  Focusing on your priorities, moving your projects forward, achieving a life balance that meets your needs and desires.  However, while I recognise that this is a simple concept to grasp, it is not necessarily the easiest thing to actually do.  Whenever we ask people in our workshops “how should they manage time”, they invariably have all the answers, the difficulty comes when they attempt to put that into action.  Life gets in the way and immediately undermines our confidence that we can ever acquire the discipline to be truly focused!

Well, February 29^th 2012 (or any day after it) is your opportunity to break that thought process and begin re-building your confidence to master the time of your life.

I want you take just 1/48 of this extra day and devote it to something that you truly love; something or someone that makes your life worth living.  Just 30 minutes of pure focus.  Switch off any potential sources of distraction and allow yourself to live in the moment completely.

After, or even during the 30 minutes, I want you to capture what you have done with some tangible evidence – a picture, a written record, a song or even a physical item.  This process will ensure that you have at least one example of when you have lived life on your terms; one piece of evidence that you can do it.  Once you’ve done anything once, you have proven that you can always do it again.  30 minutes a day, over 12 months is more than 7 days!  Wow!  Who needs one extra day every four years when we’ve just added 7 days in one year?  I promise this is not some Jedi mind trick – you are on your way to time mastery! 

Tell us what you do with your 30 minutes (remember this is a family friendly show!)

“Mastering Time 24/7 – how to work less, deliver more and live a Great life” is available to download here.

Puppet on a string

There are millions of people who have been on a 1/2 day course or read a book who would consider themselves “time managers” but what exactly are they managing?  Are they the managers or are they being managed?

Recent scientific evidence and theories would suggest that the more we learn about time, the less we actually know.  All we know is that we cannot stop certain things; the ageing process, the changing of the seasons and the certainty of youth.  But can we stop time?  Time management trainers like to give us the impression that we can “make more time” but too often this message is confused with just “doing more”.  The great Stephen Covey elaborated further when he asked us all to focus on the right things – to stop just doing and focus more on being.  In my work on personal effectiveness, I always encourage people to develop both the motivation for change and the confidence to make it happen, but ultimately, it all comes down to what we choose to prioritise in our lives.

There are only 24 hours in a day, (although I am investigating the possibility of creating time by flying westwards continuously around the world!)  We can only ever do so much before our bodies need to rest, so choosing what we do is critical if we are to progress (where progress means achieving something that is important to us.)  This is a vital consideration when it comes to the challenge of “balancing our lives”.

Many delegates on our programmes complain of not having enough time to do the things they really want to do in life because work gets in the way.  They express it as feeling like they don’t control their lives.   But this is simply untrue.  What they are actually doing is constantly prioritising work.  There will be times when there are critical timescales at work when it needs to be prioritised, but if that is becoming the norm then you still have a choice.  Is this what you want to do with the time of your life or would a different way of life suit you better?

I am pleased to say that about 5% of the people who go through our workshops change their current work situation afterwards.  This is by far the best situation for all involved; the individual is enhancing their sense of control over their life and focusing on the things that they really want to do, the company they are leaving is no longer sustaining an individual who is not 100% committed to their cause and the 400+ people in the individual’s network now have a happier, more creative, member.

When was the last time you thought through what you are doing on a daily basis and assessed if it is really working for you?

Cheers,

Simes

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By the time of his death, King’s legacy was already unfolding.  His famous “I Have a Dream” speech at the Washington Monument had been delivered nearly five years earlier on August 28, 1963 and his friendship with the leading Democratic Presidential candidate, Robert Kennedy, was representative of his status as the foremost authority on civil rights and social injustice.

I first became aware of Martin Luther King through televised recordings of his speeches on various documentary programmes as a child.  Later, as a student of history, I learned that, just like most human beings, King was not perfect.  However, few can doubt that what he stood for and what he set out to achieve were goals that transformed the lives of millions in his native United States and have subsequently affected people all over the world ever since.  His non-violent approach to civil dispute echoed that of Gandhi and preceded Mandela; whilst his oratory and cry for change has been the foundation of presidential campaigns right up to the present day.  I’m sure we’ll see and hear a lot more of it over the coming months.

My question for you today though is rooted more in the message behind the message that people like Martin Luther King carry.  As they march out in defence of the rights and humanity of their brothers and sisters on the planet, what they demonstrate is a fixation on serving others.  I thought I’d share this today because it is traditional at this time of year, to set goals, create resolutions and fix our sights on what we can get from our world; but I wonder if the following might be a more energising question:

“What can we give to the world in 2012?”

I was being interviewed today by someone interested in the social enterprise setup of my business and I found myself answering one question quicker than every other.  The question was; “Why do you spend so much of your time helping others?”  My immediate response was; “I feel I should because I can.”  Now, I’m no angel, and I’ve a long way to go before I’ve even scratched the surface of my ambitions for making a difference; but I am doing all I can, where I can.  That’s the real legacy of Great people; it’s not what they do, but what they inspire other people to do, long after they are gone.

Happy Birthday to ya Martin!

 
Simes
 

Almost without fail, when I mention to people that one of the things we do is help individuals and organisations to achieve a better work life balance through new ways of working, the response I get is “I could do with some of that.” Work life balance can sometimes seem like an elusive ideal. When the pressure is on at work and deadlines are tight it can feel like our lives are given over to work-work balance. So what can we do about it? The reality is that if you wait until the workload is beginning to overwhelm you before you attempt to make a change, it is almost too late. Start the discussions with your colleagues when workloads are more normal and they are not feeling stressed.

You need to approach work life balance with two hats on – the CEO’s and your own selfish one!.

At a corporate level it is important to realise that any effective work life balance solution will require the collaboration of other people but will ultimately come down to you – what are you willing to do to ensure that your work life balance needs do not adversely affect your colleagues? Flexibility is key. Organisations have needs too, they need to deliver products, provide customer service and meet demands. For managers tasked with delivery and aggressive performance targets, an individual with a “work life balance request” can appear to have a big label stuck to their head saying; “I AM YOUR PROBLEM”. We need to remove that immediate impression by thinking more like the boss to find a suitable solution that works for now, with a commitment to a constant review to account for unknown changes that may lie ahead. We have implemented this “piloting” approach successfully in organisations as diverse as local authorities and multi national retail giants, so we know it works and we also know the benefits for all concerned in terms of increased retention, improved morale and enhanced teamwork.

On a personal level we need to be honest with ourselves and see beyond the immediate problem and think more strategically. So, how do we go about achieving a better life balance? Well, the best place to start is by answering a couple of questions. The first is a question that many of us usually don’t spend much time thinking about – what exactly do you want out of life? What do you hope to have achieved in your lifetime? We often call this the “tombstone test”. What would you like to be written on yours? To help you access some things that your conscious mind might lock away I’d like you to imagine for a few minutes that time and money are no object. Grab a piece of paper and start writing, just let your mind wander. If you are familiar with Mind Mapping, use this excellent tool to plot your thoughts. The idea is to write down as many things as you can within just a few minutes – essentially a list of all the things you would like to do, have, experience, learn or share with loved ones if you had a limitless supply of both time and money?

The purpose of this task is to remind ourselves of some of the dreams we have that “real life” obscures and sometimes buries. Once you’ve written them down, you can now start working on them as goals. At this point I am often reminded that this list is made up of items generated under the unlikely scenario of unlimited resources. However, my favourite definition of a goal is a dream with a date on it. So, let’s get one or two dreams down on the page, put a date on them and transform them into a goal that is going to motivate us to make some fundamental changes in our lives.

Of course, this whole process has a secondary motive – to give you a reason to work on things other than your “day job”. Analysis of individuals working extra hours consistently shows that many of them do so because they don’t have a good reason to get away! Of course, that’s fine if your job is your life’s work and there is nothing else that fires you up more. However, if that is not the case, then this exercise is, hopefully, just the start of a new course for you. Don’t worry that these non-work goals will detract from your output and effectiveness in work. Research has shown that individuals with reasons to live beyond their work exude more energy, happiness and drive when they are in work. You will be doing your company a favour!

In summary, working to achieve life balance is a constant activity that involves great teamwork, devolved leadership and a truckload of personal responsibility. But if you have applied all of that and your company still refuses to work with you, then you always have the final choice and the ultimate control – you can leave and find a more forward looking employer, or change your lifestyle completely. Whatever you decide, it’s your life; spend it wisely and focus on your objectives; no one else is remotely interested in meeting them for you.

****For more on how to prioritise for life – check out our new free video series****

1. How to ensure that Your Life is your priority – not your Boss!
2. How to make that important decision.
3. Why ONLY YOU can make the improvement you want to see.

Steve Errey of Lifehack.org wrote this inspiring post, I wanted to share with my readers:

Source: Lifehack.org

**** For 3 free videos on how to boost Self Esteem and Self Confidence ****

1. How to stop feeling Stuck and move on with your life.
2. The No.1 Learnable skill that will transform your success immediately.
3. Eliminate the barriers that hold you back and replace them with new, empowering, thoughts that will propel you confidently towards the next phase in your life.

Just as valuable as being able to change things, is the ability to know when things need to be preserved, just as they are.  I’ve called this “No Change Management”.  Sometimes, processes and procedures are running so smoothly, or teams are working so effectively, that it is your job as the manager or leader to protect them, with just as much passion and zeal as the person seeking to implement a change.

This is more than maintaining “business as usual” when certain elements of the work are changing, this is about knowing when things don’t need to change at all.  You see this best in companies that strategically set out to be No.2 in their market.  They’re happy to let the pioneering No.1 take on all of the new ideas, swallow all of the costs associated with being first to market.  They don’t need to make the changes so quickly, in fact it is in their interest to lag behind and protect the current methods until the path to the future has already been cleared.

Another example, of effective “No Change Management” is within the public sector.  Often, on the whim of new government, changes are announced that would have a huge impact on the quality of service if they were implemented immediately.  The system has a number of “no change” checks and balances to ensure that enough time is given for the proposals to be fully examined before anything is done.  This can be hugely frustrating for those caught in the middle, but the negative impact of ad-hoc change would be even greater.

For more information on the positive benefits of doing nothing – check out our free video series The PPS Method

I had been filming a piece for my social enterprise and had struggled all day yesterday with the editing software because the file-size of the film itself was too big.  It was swallowing all of the memory of my teeny laptop and freezing after every tiny edit.  After 10 hours of struggle came some much needed sleep and a good question: “If this isn’t working, how could it be done?”

I stayed open to possibility and help came from two sources that enabled me to redo the video in a way that didn’t need editing and before you could say “C’mon Wales, bring the World Rugby Cup home.” It was done!

The moral of the story is simple, don’t rely on 11th Hour Power, but remember it is always there and never give up on your goals.

Let’s hope the Welsh team remember that and play right up to the 80th minute again against France !

For some free videos on how to overcome any major challenges you are facing right now, head on over to http://jointhegreats.com

Everyone deals with change every day of their lives.  But, in business, the first priority is performance.  Consistent, dependable and, if possible, profitable performance.

So, when someone comes along and starts talking about change, the first response people have is not, this must be resisted at all costs, but THIS MUST BE MANAGED.

What is Old School Change Management?

Old School Change Management is any project overview that starts with the concept of “Overcoming Resistance to Change”.  The assumption is that it is human nature to resist change and this is why we need to educate, communicate and even infiltrate the masses to help them see the light.

What a load of nonsense!

Yes there will be people who will see themselves as “losers” in the change being promoted that will not be happy.  This group may put up some degree of resistance, but the majority will be more focused on how they can either minimise the impact of the change or maximise the upside.

Culturally, the likelihood of multiple jobs over a career, the degradation of unionised practices and the pace of change in our overall environment has eroded the fear that many had of change in the past.  Just look at the volume of iPhone users amongst the over 50′s.

Consequently, the prospect of change in the workplace, is seen in a very different light by the employees as well as the leadership.  Resistance is futile but careful change management is critical.

The Birth of Agile Performance Improvement

Executives don’t want to hear about “change”, they want to hear about performance improvement.  They don’t want to spend time fighting resistance, they need to worry about achieving targets.

Agile Performance Improvement is change in small bursts.  As an approach, it recognises that we haven’t got time to plan “a change programme” – instead we need to specify the requirements, achieve rapid buy-in, control the mission critical aspects of delivery and make the changes as quickly and painlessly as possible.

Before the next change comes along…

The Power of Business As Usual

The financial markets know how disruptive “change” can be.  Their response to the announcement of a change is always negative.  This is why company directors and Annual Reports always minimise the potential impact of change and prefer instead to talk about the outcomes of change and the power of their consistent, sustained delivery of Business As Usual (despite the changes).  BAU is the reason why managing change is so critical.  Change cannot become the focus of business, it is too distracting and the costs are always difficult to measure.  Instead it needs to be integrated, at close to zero cost and with minimal impact on the existing business.

DELTΔ Agents

We recently worked with an organisation that didn’t feel they could afford to change.  As a manufacturing business, daily production was all that mattered.  However, the staff survey indicated that morale was at an all-time low and sickness stats indicated that performance was already eroding.  The CEO feared the cost (in terms of time and effort) associated with an Old School Change Programme and was therefore putting off the necessary changes.  One conversation over a Latte, five one-day agile events (led by in-house trained DELTΔ Agents) and a successful launch later and it’s all done!  Until the next change…