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This 7-part model will help you to find out what is wrong with your time management.
You will learn:
– Each of the 7 parts of the time management system.
– How each part is essential to creating an effective time management system.
– The holes that are exposed in your time management system by not having any one of the 7 pieces.
– Practical tips to incorporate any one of the 7 parts of the time management system.
– The strengths and weaknesses of your time management system.
You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:
Nathan Simmonds:
Welcome to today’s Sticky Learning Lunch. It’s Friday. It’s exciting. Monday’s exciting. Friday’s exciting. Every day is exciting and we’re gonna be delivering some exciting content that’s gonna help you get a bit more focus with what you’re doing. Just giving it a few more minutes while we’re waiting for the last people to arrive into the room. Xavier, massive shout out to you for being so early. Really, really appreciated.
Nathan Simmonds:
Good to see you Tim. Good to see Janine again. Jane, hello. Thank you for being here. Fabian, Darren. Colin, thank you for being here. Who else have we got in at the moment? Abby, good to see you. Just gonna give it 10, 15 more seconds just to let the last few people arrive. We won’t hold it against anyone if they’re late, even though this is time management. Just kidding.
Nathan Simmonds:
Ah yeah, just remember bun. Wanna see a sub, right? Just while we’re setting everyone up for success, let’s make sure we get this right. Mobile phones as always, flight mode, zero out the distraction. A hundred percent attention on what we’re doing here today. A hundred percent Focus on who you are, what you need to get out of this, and how you’re gonna develop yourself. The only investment that is ever guaranteed is the one that you make in yourself. And if you’re going to that with any vague intentions, you’re only ever gonna get a vague output.
Nathan Simmonds:
So let’s be super clear on that. Phone’s off, emails closed down. Close down Your social media feeds a hundred percent attention on you in this second thing. As always, fresh page, fresh thinking, fresh page in the notepad at the top, you’re gonna write keepers up there is gonna be the things you want to keep hold of the things you wanna remember. Remind yourself about the things that you want to, to reignite that imagination and keep that thinking going and keep the learning sticky. And then finally, making sure you’ve got a drink available. We’re gonna go into this in just one more second. Good afternoon Karen. Good to see you.
Nathan Simmonds:
Let’s go then. So welcome to today’s Sticky Learning lunch with me. Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM Making Business Matter, home of Sticky Learning. And we are the leadership development and soft skills provider to the grocery and manufacturing industry. Idea of these sticky learning, these sticky lunches is to give you new information, new ideas that’s gonna help you take your skillset to a whole new level.
Nathan Simmonds:
Helping you be the best version of you in the work that you do right today. Well actually not just today, for the next seven days, we’re gonna be looking at time management and the hurdles that go with our time management and the hurdles that we need to overcome to make sure we’re doing the best that we can with the time and the space that we have available. On a scale of one to 10, one being terrible, 10 being phenomenal, how is your time management right now? I’ve got an eight coming in. Ivy, great to see you again. Thank you for being here.
Nathan Simmonds:
We’ve got a five, we’ve got an eight, got a nice mix of numbers already coming through. Haha, I drink team mid-sentence 6 5 7, 7 0.57. Wow. Okay, we’re all feeling like we’re a little bit in the middle of the road here, there or thereabouts in the majority in the question box. A couple of eights here, which is nice in the question box, what’s one thing that you would like to learn or would like to improve about your time management from the next seven days? Let’s get a flavor of what’s going on with the thinking right now.
Nathan Simmonds:
Gonna say Ivy. Ivy, I don’t think I’ve seen you since the personal development session, so it is lovely to see you here again, thank you. Sticking to what I’ve listed in my diary to do. Absolutely not leaving everything until the last minute, Abby. Definitely you’re gonna gonna get a link in. So while this is coming through, we’re gonna get a link in for the future sessions around time management. If you haven’t already registered, do so in that link though, Abby are the link to the previous sessions. And in there you’re gonna find there’s three sessions that we’ve just done around procrastination and that may really help you with some of these elements as well. Not being distracted, how to stay focused, prioritizing good, we’ve got some key elements in here.
Nathan Simmonds:
So let’s dive into this and keep hold of these. So these things you put in the question box, let’s make sure that you are writing those down on your page and you’ve got ’em in front of you and you’ve got ’em there as a, an individual learning objective for yourself. So it’s gonna help you kind of develop your thinking in that space and keep hold of that. It’s really important in a second. That link for tomorrow’s session will, sorry not to my not , the future sessions will come up and we’ll dive into that. Oh, excuse me.
Nathan Simmonds:
So what are we gonna be covering today and moving forward in these next sessions we’re gonna be looking at the seven hurdles around time management. And these are things that, you know, the often the challenges that we hit or we’re not very good at or that we now, we are missing something in that area that stops us from moving forward and enabling us to manage our time.
Nathan Simmonds:
It’s interesting kind of misnomer though about managing time because you can’t manage it. It’s gonna do what it’s gonna do. The only thing that you can do is create a structure inside it that helps you achieve what you want to. And some of that comes down to personal development planning. So how you structure those, those elements out. How you take note of the things that you need to do more often than not and then make sure that you execute against those. So let’s be super clear.
Nathan Simmonds:
Time is always gonna do what it needs to do. You just need to change certain elements of what you do and just turn the heat up and dial certain things down in order to get the best out of those moments that you, that you section off for yourself. So what are the seven hurdles? I’ve got ’em listed down here. The first one is capturing how we make sure we’re getting that information down. The second one is listing how we make sure that’s documented and compartmentalized and prioritized. I’m writing it a bit Simon because I’ve got quite a lot to put up here today. Emptying, making sure actually when you go to those pockets and those buckets that you are taking the stuff out of them at the right time and getting them cleared down,
Nathan Simmonds:
Deleting it doesn’t need to intake it out, making sure when it’s done it’s removed. Storing where you’re holding that data to make sure you know where it is and you can get to it at the right times. Scheduling where you put it in your diary to make sure that it does happen. And the last one of these seven is acting. As I just said though, execution, making sure that you do take the time to get it done and getting it and making sure those things are, you know, these seven elements are where we often stumble when it comes to our time management.
Nathan Simmonds:
So take a note of those ’cause each one of these days we’re gonna be ticking off one of these as we move through this, but what is the one thing that makes time management? What does second to last one say? Storing how many people here? Yes or no. If you’ve got a good memory one below that one. Oh, sorry. Scheduling. Apologies. Scheduling, yes or no? Have you got a good memory? Got lots of yeses coming through. Good. Got one note.
Nathan Simmonds:
How do you feel about your time management then on a scale of one to 10, like I said earlier, know, how are you feeling? How do you feel about the systems that you’ve got in place? One terrible 10 phenomenon. I’ve got yes or no? Depends on the value of the experience. Got eight on a system, six on a, I wrestle with them, you know, seven. I think that’s a seven. It could be a minus seven, I’m not sure that would be quite bad on a one to 10 scale, 4, 7, 5.
Nathan Simmonds:
Okay. So it’s just bearing in mind that yes, you may have a good memory and we’ll talk about that in a second, but it’s having trust in your systems and understanding how you work as an individual that’s gonna make the difference to your time management. How many times have you heard people say, yeah, I’m, I’m really forgetful.
Nathan Simmonds:
I’ve got a really bad memory. How often do we hear this? A lot? Yes. No, maybe from ourselves or maybe from the people around us. Me of it’s absolutely. Well the truth is it’s not that you’ve got a bad memory, it’s what you think of yourself and that memory. Now how many things are we being asked to do on a daily basis and then we give ourselves a hard time for forgetting something. When we get home, now we have a a list of objectives of things we want to get done during our day. We have our outlook calendar in our back to back meetings.
Nathan Simmonds:
We’ve got a task list, we’ve got a note bad with a to-do list in there, all these fantastic things. And then something else comes in, a curve ball comes in and all of a sudden we forget to do this thing over here because we’ve been pulled to do this over here. And then you go home and say, oh, I’m a bad person, I have a terrible memory I didn’t get this done. And then you start giving yourself a hard time because of this. Anyone know this experience, yes or no? At some point in their, in their career.
Nathan Simmonds:
A healthy time management system is built on trust. Simple as that. If you don’t trust the system that you’ve got, how will you be able to manage the things that are coming in on your to-do list and, and your, and helping you to support your time? You won’t ’cause you don’t believe that you have a good memory. You don’t believe that you have a good system. Frankly, we could go political here and you know, what are your thoughts? You know, what happens to government if people don’t trust their government and vice versa, the relationship starts to break down.
Nathan Simmonds:
So we’re already starting to get into the point of actually we have to trust the system we’re putting in place, otherwise we’re gonna be finding gaps in, in how it’s working, how it’s not working. And we’re gonna be looking for the negatives by saying, I’ve got a bad memory. Oh I didn’t do that. Oh I’m sorry I whatever. I’m making apologies for these things. Also having a little faith in, actually we’ve got a lot going on. Life is busy and for some of us it’s even more busy in the middle of this situation, let alone on a normal day.
Nathan Simmonds:
This, this is the first part. You’ve got to have trust in the system that you are putting in place. And that’s gonna be different for different people. When we understand the hurdles and how they link, then we can start to go, okay, well actually I need to focus on this one area and we can start to rate ourselves individually on each of these with a one to 10 scale to see which part we need to work on. The second part that comes into this, so number one is trusting the system. Number two is the idea, sorry, is we’re creating cosmos from chaos. And that’s right on that light. I do apologize.
Nathan Simmonds:
The trust comes first. Do I trust the system? Do I trust myself in the system? The idea of having these seven hurdles and having that system in place is so that you can create order cosmos. That’s what cosmos actually means is it means order. So we create cosmos from the chaos of the day that’s happening around us, of what’s happening in our desk, what’s happening in our inbox, that we can take those things and we can capture them in just the right way to making sure that we can to grab onto those core elements and centralize them in some sort of way, shape, or form.
Nathan Simmonds:
And it just gives us that little bit of stability to make sure that we’re, we’re minimizing what may go past us or what we miss. And that happens, it’s human. So one, trust two cosmos create order number three takes us into our first hurdle. Capturing, capturing. Is not a memory test. How many people here feel like, you know, when they’re being given things by their significant other half or or no stuff comes in or something happens at work and they feel like they, they they should remember this. Now I should remember this.
Nathan Simmonds:
Or Oh, oh yeah, I’ll remember that. How many people have got this? You know, something comes in, you think, yeah, I’ll remember that, that’s fine. Yes or no, we experience and say, oh yeah, that’s easy, I should remember that. And then what happens when we forget? What happens is, you know, we end up giving ourselves that hard time. We end up saying things like, I’m having a senior moment or we stereotype our hair color. You know, or we start kicking ourselves or someone else gives us a hard time. It’s not a memory test. Our brains can only compute a certain amount of, of bits per second.
Nathan Simmonds:
I dunno exactly what it is. I think it’s something like a panic embarrassment and self-critical. Exactly that Colin, our brains I think can process around about 2 million bits a second, but we’re actually being bombarded with about 80,000 million bits. Okay? 2 million bits per second. So there’s only so much room as data coming in. And if that hasn’t been, if that has hit the short term memory and hasn’t gone to your long-term memory of being captured in the right way, it’s very likely that the next thing that comes in will be for, you know, that thing will be forgotten as it’s pre preceded by the next thing as it’s knocked out.
Nathan Simmonds:
Because Your short-term memory is only holding onto certain elements before that happens. It’s not a memory test. I’ll give you a prime example, you know, of, of how damaging this can be was actually holding an interview. And the first part of an interview was, you know, the, the wonderful role play. So I briefed the gentleman and I said, look, this situation got this, this is your your scenario. I’m gonna come back in 15 minutes and I’m gonna go through this scenario. But he says, yeah, great, I’ll go away for 15 minutes. I come back, I said, you’re ready? He said, yeah, I’m ready.
Nathan Simmonds:
So I started asking the questions and he, I noticed he had no notes in front of him. So I asked him, started going through the scenario and asking him the questions and he couldn’t answer them. And I rapidly realized that actually he didn’t know any of the answers to any of the questions that I was asking. I said, oh, let’s, let’s stop what, what’s happening here? And he said, I thought I could remember it all. So in the pressure of an interview, you know, in, in going what can be quite a tense situation for people, he decides to put more pressure on himself to try and look better in the, in the, in the interview scenario by remembering the content of a role play. What do you think happened to the interview
Nathan Simmonds:
In one word, yes, it was by, I managed my time in that situation because I knew that that interview could not finish could not move forward ’cause he attempted. Now when we were in high pressure situations, our brains work in a slightly different way and our memory starts to be affected. The neocortex starts to, you know, not work at the highest possible level. I closed the conversation, it finished within 10 minutes and he was kicking himself. It was appropriate to do that. The second point I’ll put down here is there is no prize for this test.
Nathan Simmonds:
The only thing that we get is potentially a hard time from ourselves, from our significant others when we forget their birthdays from work or when we forget to do a task, there is no prize for this memory test and no one’s gonna celebrate when you get it right. So the best thing that you can do is understand that there’s a lot going on and you need to create the systems to make sure that you are capturing the content some way, shape or form. How do you capture it? How a question for you all here I’m conscious of how are you capturing your elements? You know, the things that you need to remember on a, on a day-to-day basis.
Nathan Simmonds:
Lists, notes, good sticky notes, good. Notepad. Then move to diary so I can manage time. Nice, good chain to do list, outlook, categorization. Absolutely Vicky. We have multiple ways to capture stuff now I know people that travel with a, a packet of sticky notes in their pocket. We, you know, post-it notes, we have our mobile phones. We can put a note onto that. Your capturing is, you know, your capturing points are wherever you are thinking about these things at most. Or you know, or they or they come to mind.
Nathan Simmonds:
I know people that have got whiteboard pens in their bathroom so that when the ideas come up when they’re brushing their teeth, they can grab a pen and write it on the mirror. So it is wherever these thoughts are coming up for you and making sure you get them in the right place. And it may be on your outlook on your laptop, it may be, you know, these wonderful great big paper pads we have with to-do lists written down the side. It may be the back of your notepad. And I’ve seen this done very effectively.
Nathan Simmonds:
When those actions come in those to-dos, they go to the back of the notepad and they start to list them in numerical order from the back working forward rather than being lost in the notes that we’re taking at the front. We might take those actions and then we shift to the back. So we’ve got sight of those constantly.
Nathan Simmonds:
So it’s finding the right time. One trust, you know, create the system. Two, create cosmos, you know, from the chaos that is going on around you. And three, capture best things you can do. One, think about where you know you’ll have most of your ideation, where most of the thoughts come up. Is it while you’re at your laptop in your outlook working at your desk now, wherever is it in the car? Where do you need to make sure that you’ve got somewhere that you can document these thoughts as they come in and literally capture them.
Nathan Simmonds:
Because otherwise they’re just gonna float around on the carousel of your imagination. And as you know, when you’re looking at the carousel, you can see the horse and there’s the idea going around and then it disappears around the back. It hasn’t got off the carousel yet, which means at some point it’s gonna come back round either with your manager sitting on it, you know, pointing a finger or with a part of frustration because you didn’t remember it the first time.
Nathan Simmonds:
Great suggestion here is usually send myself a voicemail or email it out exactly that. Now stick it on as alarm on your phone. On a text message to yourself or to your, an email to yourself wherever you might be. Voicemail is phenomenally powerful because you know, when we’ve got things like a Alexa or a mobile phones or whatever we can do even when we’re driving, we can voice activate those things now and actually record that note to ourselves and have it emailed to ourselves. So when we get to our desk, it’s there as a reminder when we’re doing the capturing process, the analogy that’s used in in the time management and the ultimate guide to time management that we have in there.
Nathan Simmonds:
It talks about the pool table, like a snooker table. Every pocket is different and we use those pockets at different times at different locations depending on what’s going on in the game. And it’s like capturing. We need to use certain pockets at certain times, but we also need to be aware that as over a period of time when we put so many balls into that pocket, we’re gonna have to go and empty it. We’re gonna have to go and take some of that stuff out, categorize it and delete certain things and action certain things, which is how we then start getting into these other areas.
Nathan Simmonds:
I hope that’s been useful so far. One, get some trust in there. Start thinking about how you speak about yourself and your time management. Let’s be really clear on this. You know, when I look at time management, this is something I may say as we go through these sessions, you know, is time serves me, I don’t serve time. And what that means is we’re gonna put some little tactics and tips and ideas through this as we get this mindset right, as we find out on the hurdles that we find that we are stumbling on personally and how we can overcome that and get better results.
Nathan Simmonds:
So one, create trust in what you are doing and in what and how you are getting to those tasks and what you are actually completing on a daily basis. I imagine that jobs that you are in are pretty high pressure. So 10 out of 10 forgetting where you’ve got to right now because those expect expectations and those pressures now that’s the stuff that challenges on a day-to-day basis. Two, creating clarity cosmos, you know, ordering what we’re doing. And number three, making sure that we’re grabbing that stuff, documenting it at the right time and making sure we’re putting it in the right place.
Nathan Simmonds:
Something else that I do is, yes, I have multiple lists, I’m a creative my brain, you know, it doesn’t work in a straight line. So what I do is I do document different actions and then once a day, once a week I come back and go back over those just to make sure I can find them all and bring them into one place. So making sure that I’m listing them. Hope this is useful. A couple of different ways to look at time management, but the first one is trust yourself and the system you’ve got in. What’s been useful from today’s session so far? And this is only session one, so we’re gonna start adding some other layers to this, this and other ideas. What has been useful from today’s session?
Nathan Simmonds:
Talking about how we do it. Yep, good trust in my system. Absolutely Ideas about capturing good at no point, let me remind you, at no point there is this isn’t a, there is no prize for this game. There is no winner, no you are thinking I’ve got trying to have the best memory in the world. The best memory is only gonna be ce you know celebrated by your ability to take it from there onto there and get it done. No one caress about all the other stuff unless you’ve got it wrong and then gonna give you a hard time self-trust and that my system isn’t that bad, but less self-critical.
Nathan Simmonds:
Absolutely, you know, the system’s worked for you so far and there might be just some tweaks and adjust to build that up to make it, you know, from, take you from a seven out of 10 to an eight out of 10. And if you can get one more, you know, get one step up on that scale just to help improve that, no life’s gonna be a better place. Creating clarity, absolutely grab the ideas, get them and centralize them. Get them into the pockets on the, on the pool table so that you know where that information is. That’s gonna be the first part of creating that clarity for you. What questions have you got for me right now? Conscious of time 21.
Nathan Simmonds:
What questions have you got for me around capturing at this point in time that I can help with? No questions. Thank you Jane. Appreciate that. While those coming in, we have the link is there for Monday session. Monday we’re gonna be talking about listing and how we’re documenting and compartmentalizing certain things and as I said, starting to grab certain things in certain places and making sure we’re getting them in the right places. We’ve got the link there for Monday session. If you have not registered already, do so now you refer to the pockets on the pool snooker table. Is the six re is the six relevant to the number of categories?
Nathan Simmonds:
No it is just, you know, in this analogy, no it’s understanding that you know, there’s, there’s six pockets and they’re gonna be appropriate at different times depending on what pools are on the table, where you are standing in relation to them. So in that relation could be you are in your car and you need to use this tool to capture this at this point. In fact, I also know other people. I also know other people that when they’re driving on listen to something, maybe a podcast or they actually pull over, they find the nearest lay, they stop and then they write down the thing that they’ve got ’cause it’s so important to them.
Nathan Simmonds:
An absolute suggestion coming in when we’re talking about these number of pockets, you don’t have to have six areas. You can put these things, you have as many capturing points as you can trust. So it might be one notepad that you use for this. It might be there’s a pad in the car. It might be that you have a special folder on your outlook where you can send those voice messages to that pings you a certain kind of alert that reminds you about it when you get to your desk. So the idea is not to have six pockets, but then forget pockets six and five.
Nathan Simmonds:
Because you only ever go to one to four, get rid of five and six because if you can’t trust that, you’re gonna go back to them and you’re gonna forget about them. Your priorities and your and your execution is gonna be all over the place. So stick to the four that you know are gonna work for you. Hope that’s useful. What other questions have we got right now just as that’s coming in? We have a deck of coaching cards for time management. It’s something that has been built by Darren for MBM that was founder of MBM.
Nathan Simmonds:
There is on our website now, we have this on our website, the time management and coaching cards to help you structure and go through all seven of these hurdles to get a, you know, a stronger system in place to take the system that you’ve got up a level and make it even more robust to make sure you’re getting those things done. The link for those is in our chat box right now.
Nathan Simmonds:
No more questions coming through at the moment. On a scale of one to 10, so far, how useful is today being one terrible, 10 being, you know, phenomenal? Oh, we’ve got 10 good thank you list allows to organize and prioritize. However it’s important to clean up that list at one point. It is correct. Absolutely Fabian, this is when we get into this listing and this empty and this deleting and then we get things actually onto on scheduling. Now what gets scheduled gets done and acting. The first part though is making sure we’re getting those things and actually we are acting and executing the things that need to be done.
Nathan Simmonds:
Time out for some reflection is good. Absolutely celebrate where you’re winning and adjust where you need improvement. Reminded me of bits on you, hope to learn more going forward. Absolutely and I hope to hope so too with just some core elements as we go through and just keep tweaking and adjusting and turning up and dialing down the relevant elements that are gonna get you even more clear on what you’re doing with the time management. Everyone. Look, it’s Friday. Thank you very much for being here. Thank you very much for attending this sticky learning lunch.
Nathan Simmonds:
We at MBM, we have the virtual classrooms. We have a multitude of soft skills available. Again, I’m gonna find a better word for these training sessions available in our virtual classrooms. If there is something that we do that you’ve seen in these sticky learning lunches that would help you, your team, your business, now is the time to have a conversation with us about those virtual classrooms and help to get us the team into your teams to help them be the best version of them in the work they’re doing right now.
Nathan Simmonds:
There will be a link for the virtual classrooms in the chat box for you. Now, if you’ve also, if you’ve enjoyed today’s session, please make sure you are sharing the link for the future sessions. That first one that got shared in the, in the chat box there. Please if you know someone else that would benefit from having their time management improved even by 1% over the course of the next, you know, six sessions, send them the link, invite them to join to join the future sessions.
Nathan Simmonds:
Because I would look, you know, very much appreciate helping them take what they do. Even further, everyone thank you very much for today. Have a phenomenal weekend and I look forward to seeing you on Monday. Thanks a.
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