The purpose of today’s meeting was to keep it casual and workshop some of our current challenges. Nick started it off by saying that there are just not enough hours in the day to get everything done. Who can’t relate to that?! This quickly turned the meeting into a conversation about time management. However Randy quickly made it clear that the issue isn’t really about time management, it’s about intention management!
Is the challenge really time management?
Or is it intention management?
We talked about time management tools, time blocking, processes, and priorities – we all have our own way of doing things. Yet we still struggle. So the challenge really seemed to really be – how do we focus on the right stuff? How do we figure out and prioritize the things that will most contribute to our success?
I brought up the book Eat That Frog which is all about managing procrastination and getting more done. Because focusing on things that don’t bring you closer to reaching your goals is actually a form of procrastination. The idea is to focus on the activities that are big and difficult but have the greatest returns – get those done first. Get those out of the way. Eat that frog! A gross but memorable metaphor.
The phrase is based on a quote often attributed to Mark Twain: “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”
There is activity and then there is meaningful activity
So often you want to get s**t done so you feel like you got s**t done, instead of getting the hard s**t done so that you make the most progress. (So profound Suzanne! 😆)
Your emergency is not my emergency
Ever have someone call you in a panic only to find out they’ve royally mucked something up and needed your help to fix it? It happened to me just before the meeting and made me a few minutes late. So I love Randy’s quote, “Your emergency is not my emergency” because I could have easily put them off for an hour or a day and everything would still be fine. They probably would have even figured it out themselves. But it’s hard!
Time management books and tools that were shared
- Randy uses KanbanFlow to manage his workload.
- Donna recommended the book Time Management by Brian Tracy.
- I recommended the book Eat That Frog (also by Brian Tracy) to help with procrastination.
- Lenka shared this cool article she wrote Increasing Productivity Through Self-Validation for Tech Professionals: How validating your own needs and valuing yourself as being worthy of self-care leads to becoming more focused and efficient at work.
- Matt shared that he got a little help from AI to build a side-hussle that doesn’t take up too much of his time. Ironically it’s an Etsy store that sells printables to help you with time management and intentional living! 😲 Check out Serene Crafts and be sure to give him some good reviews! It’s super cool.
Next meeting
So… based on this conversation, next month’s meeting will be about Intention Management! We’ll work on figuring out the top 3 things that are going to most effectively push you closer to your intent. Hope you like frogs! That’ll be on Wednesday, April 10th