- Do you hop from one task to another, not knowing what to do first?
- Do you ever get distracted by mountains of paper?
- Do you leave one task unfinished before moving to the next?
- Do you put difficult tasks aside in favour of the easy?
- Does your to-do list seem never-ending?
Overall, would you like to be more in control of your time and life?
Moving between tasks, settling for a moment then landing on another task, is one of the common misuses of time. The same may happen with your thoughts – you start thinking about one thing and then flit to another! Not only is it unsettling, it involves exerting lots of energy as you think about one task, leave it in the middle and move on to another. When you come back to the first task, you are likely to need to remind yourself what it’s about all over again hence wasting precious time. This practise is known in time management jargon as The Butterfly Syndrome.
Seven Ways to Take Control
So here are Seven Steps to help you take more control of your time and stop the butterflying.
- Clear your workspace before you start. The very sight of lots of papers around you is a diversion waiting to happen as the eye gets drawn to all the tasks waiting for your attention, causing unnecessary stress. Put all papers unconnected to the task you are doing somewhere you can’t see them, so you are less able to butterfly from one thing to another – the ‘out of sight, out of mind’ principle. If you are working on an idea or strategy, take a clean sheet of paper, or work on a clean screen, and write down your GOAL. Keep your eye on the goal, not allowing yourself to be diverted. You won’t win the match if you do!
- Refer to your ‘to-do’ list. Make this at the end of one day’s work ready for the start of the next. Make sure your list is in priority order so that you do the most important task first.
- Complete one task before you move to the next. If a task will take a long time, say 4 hours, divide it into 4 tasks of an hour each, prioritised for different Times of the day, or to be done on different days, and list them in your planner or diary. This way you can complete tasks since each task becomes do-able in terms of the time it takes.
- Once you complete a task, cross it off your To Do list– it will give you a sense of achievement and motivate you to do more tasks.
- Avoid doing lots of easy tasks, simply to make your list look smaller. They will use the energy you need for doing what’s important ie. the tasks that take you towards your goals.
- Have a good diary and/or planner system so that you diarise tasks for the future and don’t lose track of them. It is this concern about forgetting things that often leads to butterflying; that’s why a system that won’t let you forget is so important.
- Avoid distractions! How easy it is to get diverted from the task in hand! A cup of coffee, getting drawn into a conversation or gossip, an article in a magazine, a telephone call …can take you away from what you were doing.
Manage interruptions and diversions assertively and confidently and don’t let yourself be easily distracted from the task in hand. Let others know when you are available so that you don’t need to leave your current task, spend time on a different task before having to get your head back around the original task.
A Sense of Achievement
Butterflying can be tiring, and you can feel tired at the end of the day yet without a sense of achievement. Following these Seven Steps will help you stay on track, reduce your To-Do List and do what really matters.
Taking Action
Life Coaching can help you to achieve positive change such as improved time management and less butterflying. If you would like to know more, please contact me.
In addition, I offer daily advice and tips on Twitter.
