I encourage them to create conflict within their calendar and avoid conflict with other people or projects. The conflict cannot be avoided, but it can be moved.
Many people live their lives as virtual slaves to their calendar; and that calendar is largely set by outside forces. Someone calls and wants to schedule an appointment, a project deadline is approaching, a new initiative is beginning and needs time for meetings. All of these things may be good, but what if they begin asking for the same block of time? And, what about family time and personal health?
What do you do when your calendar is filled with important things and you have more things to do than time to do it?
You create conflict in your calendar.
I have had the following coaching conversation several times in the last few weeks with several different clients (players). It goes something like this:
Coach: We have been talking about your goals, values, and high priorities; how did you address them this last week?
Player: I did not get a chance to focus on them this last week, it was slammed!
Coach: It seems that over the last several weeks you have had difficulty finding time to work toward your goals. Would you like to change your goals perhaps? Do you still think these measures are the most important things for you to accomplish?
Player: No, I don't want to change them, I know that I need to be doing these things, I just have so much going on. I will try better next week!
What do you do when you know what is most important and yet you still find yourself doing other things?
You create conflict in your calendar.
Set aside an hour (or a day if you need to) and get out a blank calendar. I find that a week-long calendar works best. Our goal is to create a "perfect week". The perfect week is one in which you get to spend your time exactly how you would like to. Everything from personal time to family time to business and church gets done exactly how you want it. Begin by making a list of all of these things and how much time you think they would take. Be sure to include travel time for things that require it (so an hour at the gym that is 30 minutes away would actually be a 2 hour time block).
Once your list is complete start filling in blocks on your calendar. It will not take you very long to find that some items on your list begin to compete for the same time block. Great! You are well on your way to allowing conflict to happen in your calendar. Now the real work begins; you get to decide which of these very important things is more important. You will be amazed at the clarity and creativity that arises as you wrestle with your calendar, attempting to create your perfect week.
If you complete this process and actually implement it you will also be amazed at the amount of conflict you remove from your work and personal relationships. Your perfect week calendar will begin to be a filter that all new projects and meetings must work through. No longer will external forces drive your time; instead they will fit into pre-determined slots. Sound crazy? It really isn't. Notice the simple difference in these two conversations:
Conversation One:
Other person: Hey Jeff, I really need to meet with you this week, can you do Wednesday at 9; this is really urgent!
Me: (I have a regularly scheduled meeting I have deemed "important" at 9, but he just said it was urgent, I suppose I will need to adjust my calendar!) Um, sure I think I can do that, just let me rearrange a few things.
I just set myself up for conflict in at least one relationship as I will now have to go to a regularly scheduled meeting and attempt to change it to fit this new meeting (one that I don't have a timeline on).
Conversation Two:
Other person: Hey Jeff, I really need to meet with you this week, can you do Wednesday at 9; this is really urgent!
Me: Wednesday at 9 is booked for me, but I can do 10:30 or 1:00. About how long do you think this meeting will take?
Other person: It should be about an hour... and 1:00 should work, see you then!
This may seem like an over-simplified example, but I have seen it work hundreds of times. I have found that many people never even offer alternative times when people or projects ask them to compromise a pre-scheduled activity. Often that is because they don't know when they have an open time slot.
[A side note for those of you who are tempted to say, "I don't have an hour, much less a day, to do this!" If your child was rushed to the hospital could you find time to go see him? What if you had a heart attack, would you be able to take a few hours off? Time is a measure of priority, and if gaining control of your time is a priority you will make time for it.]
When you take time to bring structure and order to your calendar based on your priorities, values, and goals you will actually increase your ability to be flexible and adapt to new time demands.
