A couple of years ago a great friend hired out a chateau in south west France to celebrate his 40th birthday. About 20 of us spent a fantastic week lazing by the pool, drinking gin and tonics, cooking up feasts, and talking nonsense till the wee hours.
Apart from all the fun memories, what really stuck with me was a conversation with one of the women – Kathy, a very successful management consultant who I had not met before. She had recently got her employers to agree to a 3 day week. Not so unusual if she had children, perhaps. However, a single woman in her late thirties, her motivation was simply that she wanted more time to be creative, to smell the roses and enjoy a more relaxed pace of life.
One of the differences she was relishing was the time she now had for her friends. Instead of hastily buying a last minute birthday card and scribbling her name at the bottom, she was making her own cards and writing them proper letters.
Kathy was fortunate in that she earned a very good salary and could afford to do this. But the main message I took from our chat was the happiness she was experiencing as a result of thinking about what was important to her, and giving it the priority it deserved.
Generally speaking, it’s not lack of time that stops us pursuing a goal, but the fact that we haven’t made that goal a true priority. Is there something you’d love to be doing if only you had the time? Catching up on your reading, seeing more of your family, writing that book - exercising perhaps.
Maybe a 3 day week isn’t an option for you. But how else could you reorganise your life to make room for something important to you?
Another aspect of Kathy’s story that I liked was that she had thought outside the “norm.” Why work a 5 (or more) day week just because everyone else does? When I first trained in coaching, I came across another interesting example of creative thinking. One of the trainers recommended that we structure our practices to provide just 3 sessions a month, instead of the more common weekly set up. I’ve done this and it’s a great way of building in time for other things, like writing - or even allowing for a spontaneous holiday without having to worry about rearranging clients’ sessions.
If you’re not self employed you might struggle to influence your time to this extent, but we can all find some time for what matters. I read recently about a lady who was complaining that she never had time to draw. “How much time does it take?” was her counsellor’s response as she got her client to put pen to paper then and there.
We don’t need to wait for the ideal circumstances: most of us can find 30 minutes a day. There’s an important project I’ve been putting off until I have time to “think about it properly.” (Of course over the space of several weeks this time has never come!). So I tried out the 30 minute philosophy. It was highly effective but surprisingly difficult. I never realised before how often my mind leaps to check just one more email, make a quick cup of coffee, or even go to the toilet when I don’t really need to!
However after only 2 days I had made modest but real progress on a project that had been gathering dust. I see that it wasn’t time after all that had been holding me back, but a combination of not making the work my true priority, and of not knowing where to start. (I’ve also realised the answer to not knowing where to start – is just to start, anywhere!)
What’s your top priority? What could you achieve by dedicating to it just 30 minutes a day?
