Thursday, May 16, 2013

Agenda Item for 5/17/2013

Topic: It's About Time: Budgeting

If you can't manage your time effectively you're unlikely to achieve your goals. People in transition seem to have no difficulty meeting commitments to others but a lot of difficulty with their commitments to themselves. There's a lot of reasons for that. Not having clear goals, not respecting themselves and their own time, not being good about to estimate the time things will take, ove-packing their schedules, and of course - procrastination.

Using a "time as money" analogy. I've noticed a limited resource is managed better than an unlimited one. Those who are currently employed seem to have less problem with time management. With the bulk of their time given over to their employer, those with jobs seem forced by constraint to manage their remaining time better. Perhaps the better you are at managing your time resources the more employable you are which limits your time making you better at managing time. (correlation v. causation - I don't know)

This week I'm introducing the start of a four week project for OCA attendees that includes learning, planning, training, monitoring, and peer support all focused on helping us get better at managing time. We're going to align what we do with what we need to do. We're going to treat time like money. A fixed allotment is available to spend and we're going to determine where to spend it so that it does us the most good.

The recommended book:
The Now Habit (Amazon Link) We'll be reading and discussing. My hope is that having a lesson absorbed from multiple perspectives will draw out more useful lessons than if each of us were to read it on our own and not discuss it. (I know I'll certainly get more value from it than if just let someone else share their "lessons learned" without having read the book myself.)

This week's topic: How will you structure your time three weeks from now? two weeks from now? and next week? We're going to work on our specific plans for the next three weeks in an exercise called "Week of Intention".

(Exercise handouts available at meeting)

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