If you jump at everything that moves, then you’ll eventually get to a point where all you’re doing is jumping.

How much time do you waste or see being wasted reacting when a better approach would be being selective at what gets responded to?

This is the classic quandary a conscientious busy person finds themselves in.

In the classic productivity book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey tells the story of a woodcutter trying to cut a tree with a blunt saw.

Instead of taking time to sharpen the saw, the woodcutter works hard but doesn’t make much progress due to how blunt the saw is.

“If you want to reclaim your life, start by reclaiming your time” – Richie Norton

Too busy?

Not enough hours in the day to get everything done?

“The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities” – Stephen Covey

At some point any parent will undoubtedly have been asked:

Are we there yet?

When will dinner be ready?

It’s apparent from an early age we want clarity. Young children often struggle to comprehend when there isn’t alignment between their expectations and the response. Whereas, adults are better at understanding this.

"Time isn't the main thing. It's the only thing." - Miles Davis 

Time often emerges as a challenge when I talk with senior executives, middle managers, general white-collar workers or even junior cadets.

“It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light” - Aristotle

In the workplace, hard skills are qualifications and specific occupation technical skills that determine our degree of fit to particular job roles. Whereas, soft skills are what we use to function, interact, connect and communicate. While it’s necessary to have specific hard and soft skills, it’s the soft skills that are more important to our life skills.

“A lot of times people don't know what they want until you show it to them” – Steve Jobs

Proactive employees are self-starters who are inquisitive problem solvers. While it might be aspirational to behave like this, the stark reality is a large percentage of employees find it difficult to do so in a technology-driven world. Instead, it’s easy to get caught up in a reactive loop responding to demands that impede the ability to be being proactive.

“You don’t get results by focusing on results. You get results by focusing on the actions that produce results.” - Mike Hawkins

It was named in the top 5 most sought-after soft skills employers look for in LinkedIn’s Global Talent Trends 2019 report. Tim Ferriss (author of the 4-Hour Workweek) describes it as the key to his success. Why is time management having a resurgence of sorts?

“Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.” - John Ruskin

What’s your definition when determining a perfect workday? Is it an easy day, an enjoyable day or something else? I think of perfect workdays occurring when my plan to make an impact is executed like clockwork. When I feel like I’m in control while I’m achieving or making progress on targeted outcomes. It’s rare that perfect workdays happen by accident.

“Sometimes our stop-doing list needs to be bigger than our To-Do List” - Patti Digh

How effective do you manage your To-Do List? Do items reside there only for a short time before they’re actioned or is it more so a never-ending list that’s constantly growing causing frustration and even overwhelm? Did you know there’s a simple technique you can implement that will transform how you manage your To-Do List?

“I do not want to waste any time. And if you are not working on important things, you are wasting time.” - Dean Kamen

Managing energy is more important than managing time (See: Is it more important to manage time or energy?). However, this doesn’t diminish the importance of managing time because the reality is both time and energy are important to our success. What’s apparent though is ineffective workers consistently demonstrate that wasting time is the proven way to fail.

“If you don't like how things are, change it! You're not a tree.” - Jim Rohn

You’re slaving away at work so why do you feel as if you’re constantly taking 1 step forward yet 2 steps backwards? Intuitively you know you should be spending 80% of your time on the key aspects of your role, but you’re so busy you can only find time for 15 – 20%. Surely there’s got to be a better way?

“Knowledge isn’t power, applied knowledge is power” — Eric Thomas

Nike’s Just Do It slogan coined in 1988 is the company’s most successful campaign. So successful it helped catapult Nike to the next level as market share soared from 18% to 43% between 1988 – 1998.  What critical aspects of our lives should we apply a Just do It mindset to?