Time is your most valuable asset. Time is your most precious resource.
It is finite - you can’t earn more of it, nor can people around you earn time.
Learning to respect time — both your time and the time of others — improves your personal growth and agency. That is to say if you respect time (its value as a finite resource), you will unlock paths to grow your relationships, free yourself from negative sentiment when you ‘waste time’, and increase your probability of professional success. Like other topics we’ve discussed or will discuss, there is never an achieved level of “time management skills” — it will always be a work in progress.
The focus for today’s time management exploration, we’ll look at (1) Respecting Your Own Time, (2) Awareness of Others’ Time, and (3) Advocating for Your Time.
Respecting Your Own Time
Do you overcommit your time? Find yourself often procrastinating? When you reflect on how you spend your time, do you spend hours on activities that don’t align with your goals or values? Break that cycle!
Set clear priorities: Identify what truly matters to you and spend your time allocating effort to those priorities. (establishing a regular habit to plan will help with this - see the ‘golden’ 10 minutes)
Evaluate when to say “no”: Politely decline invitations or requests that don’t align with your priorities. (This could be a post in itself, and may be in the future!)
Create boundaries: Chop up your day and allocate time appropriately into the buckets of work, personal time, and “digital detox”… try to keep regular work hours so that you are predictable to your work peers as well as to protect spillover.
Consider tracking how you spend your time each day. Are you looking at social media during your peak productivity periods? Are you consistently letting work hours extend into your personal time? Think about setting certain time aside for leisure activities. Look through your calendar of recurring meetings and if there are low/no value meetings, consider asking if your presence is still required. If you own meetings, consider whether certain meetings can be combined. Which is a good segue for the next topic…
Awareness of Others’ Time
Having developed respect for your own time, you’ll naturally become more aware of others’ time constraints. This awareness will help differentiate you from others when you use it to build strong professional and personal relationships. Ways that you can show respect for others’ time are to:
Be punctual: Show up on time for meetings or appointments.
Be prepared: If any pre-work should be done before you meet, be sure to give that your attention so that the engagements are more efficient and meaningful. If you know a friend is going to bring up a certain topic that they want your help with discussing, consider how you might provide them support and dedicate time ahead of your get-together. If the last time you saw them they brought up major life news, be sure to have it on your list to ask for a status update.
Communicate clearly: Be clear and concise in emails and conversations - get to the point.
Don’t block others’ time unnecessarily: If there are meetings that can be cancelled or combined to shorten the commitment of time, consider taking action. If you know you only need 20-25 minutes this month versus the normal blocked time of 60 minutes, send an update to the meeting to shorten its length.
Something related to be aware of is some people think there’s a lack of awareness if someone says “If there’s nothing else, I’m going to give you time back…” … you’re not giving time back to the person. (alternatively, consider saying “great job to all for getting through the topics, we can end this meeting early.”)
Advocating for Your Time
If you consistently respect others’ time, you earn the right to expect the same in return. However, this means that you’ll need to be kind and thoughtful in how you advocate for respect of your time.
Here’s how for most work environments:
Communicate your boundaries: Clearly express your working hours and response times.
Block time: Scheduled focused work time and communicate its importance to others.
Negotiate deadlines: If a request doesn’t align with current commitments, propose alternative timelines (and consider communicating why the current priorities cannot be altered).
If you are managing a team and requests come in for your team to do additional work, a variant of this technique is to say “we are currently focused on delivering on <insert priorities list here>, which of those priorities are you asking for us to deprioritize to take on this unplanned work?”
Here’s how for interpersonal situations:
Set clear expectations: Share your schedule and other commitments and let them know about preferred days/times that you are typically free.
“I have work each day through 4:30 at minimum and then on Tuesdays and Thursdays I shuttle the kids to different activities - but I’m often free on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evening if you’d like to get together one of those evenings?”
Learn to say “no” gracefully: If you’re overwhelmed or need personal time, it’s ok to decline invitations. Consider giving an alternative when possible to show you value the relationship.
“I can’t hang out this Friday, it’s been a hectic week and I need some downtime. Perhaps we can plan for next Friday or Saturday?”
Establish boundaries around communication: If it’s an issue, consider letting friends know that you don’t respond to late night calls or texts.
“I try hard to keep off of electronics after 8:30 and I don’t check my phone until the morning, which is why you often will not hear from me when you text after then.”
Be honest about your needs: If you’re busy and need space, let them know. Consider giving them context - sharing what goals you’re allocating time to.
“When I set my goals for this year, I realized I wasn’t allocating time to my own projects. I’ve been wanting to write a book for over a year but I also don’t want you to think I don’t want to spend time with you if I spend less time with you. Can we move to hanging out every other weekend? That would also give me the time I need to work on my book and I’d still see you regularly?”
Lead by example and express appreciation: Respect your friends’ time as you want them to respect yours and thank your friends who respect your time and boundaries.
Putting it Together
Respecting time is a skill that requires practice and continuous refinement. When you start with yourself, then extend practice to being aware of others’ time, and finally practicing advocating for your needs, you establish a positive cycle of time awareness and mutual respect. One could say that how you value time reflects how you value yourself and others. With time being finite and of unknown quantity, respect every minute.