Fiddle Faddle and Time Management

Lincoln Snacks puts out a great product called Fiddle Faddle. It is a popcorn treat with that "right combination of perfectly popped popcorn mixed with scrumptious ingredients," like caramel and butter toffee that comes in a box.

But "Fiddle Faddle" can also describe a number of things that we do to fill up our performance with "acts" that don't necessarily lead to productivity. These are activities that keep us busy but don't help us accomplish our purpose-a.k.a. time robbers and time wasters. There are no shortages of acts to fill our circus. That is why it is so important to continually define our purpose and review it on a regular basis.

Thomas Carlyle put it very well when he said, "A person with a clear purpose will make progress on even the toughest road. A person with no purpose will make no progress on even the smoothest road." Look hard at your activities and determine which ones have nutritional value and which ones are just filling. Like Ernest Hemingway said, "Never mistake motion for action."

Workaholics and Work Life Balance

In his HBR Network Blog, Kevin Evers makes the case that workaholics shouldn't try to achieve work life balance. He writes, "There is always more work to do, and they [workaholics] are willing to do it." His comments echo what we teach in Juggling Elephants training programs about the fact that there will always be elephants-things that seem physically, mentally, emotionally, or even financially heavy and difficult to manage. The elephants don't stop coming until we die.

His solution is that workaholics should set boundaries for themselves, limiting the time they spend on a task (or at work) to allow for other activities. It's a perfect complement to the "3 rings" concept. We teach that you need to allow time in your daily or at least weekly "circus" for quality acts in all 3 rings-work, relationships, and self. At any one point your circus (life) may appear to be unbalanced, with maximum intensity in one ring. Over the course of a week or certainly month, however, you should be able to look back on moments where you have worked just as hard on your relationships or taking care of yourself as you have on the tasks at work.

You have to plan for all 3 areas instead of simply focusing on getting all your work done and then hoping that there is time for family or friends or personal renewal. As Evers writes, "There is always more work to do."

Elephants Aren't Always Negative

If you are following the dates of our blog posts, you will notice a HUGE gap between this post and the last one. We have been diligently working on the launch of Getting to It, which was released last month by Harper Business. We are thrilled with the book, and hope you find it beneficial as well. You can download the first chapter here as a pdf, or here as an Mp3.

Our journey to launch the book was quite an elephant, but it reminded us once again that our elephants, or those things weighing on our time and energy, are often not negative in nature. They are simply work or life events that come our way and require more than our normal attention.

And in keeping with our training about managing our elephants, we recognized that we couldn't keep the same number of "acts" in our lineup, so we stopped our blog for awhile. The good news is that we're back now, and looking forward to sharing our thoughts once again on time management and work/life balance.

Thanks for joining us for the circus of life. We appreciate it.

DSPS and Work/Life Balance

Recently there was an article in the Harvard Business Review about DSPS or Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome. Simply put, it's a condition where the person doesn't have the same circadian rhythms as the majority of the population. They may find that working from 6 PM to 2 AM is more effective for them than the normal 9 to 5 schedule. The article also looked at the challenges faced by such individuals on their personal commitments.

While these individuals have speical cases, all of us have a certain rhythm to our day-a time it works best for us to be in various "rings" of our circus. Finding that rhythm is important so we can determine how best to create our lineup on a daily basis. If we are most creative in the night hours, we should seek ways to spend more time with our families or in our self ring in the morning hours. If you like to get up early and get things done, reserving time for family and yourself in the early evening hours is most critical.

The key as always, is to be the ringmaster of your circus and take more conscious control of how you use your limited time and energy.

Moving Your Circus More Efficiently

One of the amazing aspects of the circus is how it can pack up, move to a new location and then reset to perform at a new location so quickly and efficiently. Why? Repetition of action is probably the most obvious reason, but a close second is that everything has its place. Each rail car, storage box and canvas bag has designated contents and a designated location.

Why not try that same tactic to improve your efficiency to stop those juggling elephants moments of not being able to find something? Some items and ideas might include:

• Keys
• Phone when not in use and charging
• Chargers for all electronic devices
• Planner/Tablet
• Bills/Checkbook
• Put instructions for devices you don't frequently use as close to the device as possible

Most importantly, if others will be using the item, communicate the "home" location for this item and make it mandatory that the item be returned to this location. If someone doesn't return it to the designated location, take the time to work through the value of having the item in its proper place. And celebrate success when people make the effort to put things back in their place.