The adage “Time flies when you’re having fun” proves true whether you’re having actual fun or just incredibly busy. I have noticed that the older I get, the more time seems to speed up, regardless of how I might try to slow things down. And while I can’t slow time down per se, I can adjust how I get swept up in the hailstorm by trying to remain conscious of what I am doing at each moment.
The trick is to remain mindful rather than letting the thoughts drift frenetically in time with all that is happening.
In other words, I try to inject my work life with a little bit of my yoga practice by engaging in mindfulness throughout the workday. While that might sound a little out there, mindfulness is just the practice of active, open attention to what you are doing in the present moment. It’s putting yourself fully into a task and keeping your mind on it.
It is relatively simple in theory yet challenging to put into practice. I think this is because we often go from one meeting to another, and these back-to-back meetings don’t always allow adequate time for preparing, shifting gears, or just taking a step back to absorb what we learned.
I have started to schedule breaks in between meetings or block off periods in my calendar when I am not open for meetings so I can attend work. It has been a shift for me, but I realize no one else will if I don’t carve that time. It’s a matter of reclaiming my schedule and maintaining a certain amount of control over it. The idea is not to be unconditionally accommodating to others on my team or clients because if I go straight through the day with meetings and calls, when do I get the work done? When do I provide enough time to flesh out insights, work with staff, and give my work 100% effort?
At the end of the day, we have competing priorities in Client Services between trying to maximize our time each day and providing as much value as possible. When you allow yourself to be booked in meetings or calls for 7 hours out of an eight or 9-hour workday, you will not have the stamina to provide as much value elsewhere. And when you are missing meetings to do your work or provide value, you are minimizing opportunities for collaboration.
Like almost anything else in life, time management is a balancing act. But unlike most other things in life, it is one area where you have a fair amount of control.