Time, Priorities, and Ordering Your Space

5S The Mess? There's Talent Involved

Jim Stroup's Captain of Your Own Fate post actually prompted this one. He has a clear and simple take on how executives really decide to allocate their time.

How do you allocate yours? Do you ever find it difficult?

One of my client companies is very committed to the 5S approach to organizing and ordering every workplace area. The system is crystal clear and has discreet steps that would seem easy for anyone to follow.

Not everyone finds it easy. The reason:

There are actually two separate, discreet Organizing Talents that we can possess (or not). Rather than beat up on ourselves or others, it might be useful to see these more clearly.

1. Time and Priorities. This is an innate tendency toward ordering one's own schedule to reflect what is the most important task at any given time and how long it will take. It does not automatically include the ability to order time and priorities for other people.

2. Order of Your Space. We all pretty much know whether this is a strong suit or whether we need to wrestle with it throughout life. People with this talent almost effortlessly maintain things in their proper place and even sense the most efficient positioning of physical items for easy retrieval. (This is not a gift with which I have been blessed. I actually have a 5S booklet that I follow to keep my space as organized as possible).

What is fascinating is this: It's possible to have a lot of #1 and almost none of #2 and vice-versa.

Your ability or inclination to prioritize and order your life and your space is a big deal.  People (often incorrectly) make assumptions about your other abilities based on these. My online friend Dr. Peter Vajda often reminds me that focusing only on strengths can get in the way of truly growing.

These two areas of life are so visible and have so many related implications, I'd suggest: "If you ain't got 'em, work at 'em."

Comments

[peter vajda]

I'm of the school of thought that says there's no such thing as time management-that it's about self-management...time is the symptom, "me" is the problem. When we work on self-management and self-regulation from a conscious, proactive (not reactive) place, time then ceases to be an issue.

Too, the element of values plays a large role here as making choices as to what to do, how and when is one based on values...murky and misguided values lead to confusion, chaos, "so-called" multitasking and chaos...inside and out.

With respect to priorities, many folks ask the wrong question, i.e., "What's next?" instead of the needed question, "What's first". Lack of self-management skills and clear values produces a lack of clarity and direction so everything is next and now and we know where that can lead.

As for ordering space, confusion "within" usually ends up in confusion "without."

[Steve Roesler]

Peter,

OK, I'll come clean here:-)

I literally started my consulting business after sitting through a high-priced "time management" seminar and saying to myself, "No, those techniques don't get to the real point. It's all about understanding and managing yourself."

So, there's not going to be any debate on this one.

What I think I've learned, though, is that people want or need the "time management" designation in order to be able to classify or categorize certain issues. It turns out to be a way to discuss the "presenting" problem which opens the door to the pithier issues you describe above.

Recent blog post: Time, Priorities, and Ordering Your Space

[Wally Bock]

Seems to me that Peter has summed it up quite well. It's all about managing yourself. And people seem to use "time management" as the label for anything related to personal productivity, even though many entrepreneurs have tried to get them to call it something else. Search for "time management among Amazon books and one of the top books will be David Allen's Getting Things Done, which he describes as "significantly different from traditional time management training." Other entrepreneurs, like Jim Loehr, get at the same issues but call it "energy management." What I like about Peter's distinction is that it makes an awful lot of excuses go away.

Recent blog post: 12/14/08: Leadership Reading to Start Your Week

[Steve Roesler]

Wally,

Peter frequently gets to the heart of issues that contain self-responsibility. He's done another good job with this one.