4. Guard Your Time

you're listening to seven keys toreclaiming your time, energy and productivity, a Himalaya learning audiocourse. Be sure to check out all of the other exclusive courses in the Himalayaapp or on himalaya.com. Hey friends. Welcome to episode four, entitled guardyour time. It's your instructor slash host slash Himalaya learning companion,Jeremy burrows here.

[00:00:43] And I'm sure your, now thatyou've done an audit, now that you've scheduled your time, now that you'vebucketed your time, I'm sure you are thinking Jeremy. I cannot set up an idea.We counter, like you said, in the last episode, I am not good at saying no, Ihave too many demands. I have too many distractions.

[00:01:08] I have too many people reachingout, wanting me to hear or wanting me there. There's just no way. And I get it.I get, if that's how you're feeling. Don't worry. That's how most people feel.Um, anytime I talk about the idea, we feel like that'll never happen. There'sno way I could do that. And like I said, in the last episode, baby steps arekey.

[00:01:32] All right, start small. You cando it. The reason you bought this course, the reason you subscribed to Himalayalearning is so that you can step up your game and. Make real changes to yourlife. So let's talk about guarding your time. The first issue with managingyour time is other people want to dictate how you spend it.

[00:02:05] I talked a little bit about thislast episode. You must take back the reins and, and dictate it. But. The firsttip for doing this is you have to learn to say, no, I know this can bedifficult for many of us, myself included. When you want to impress somebody,you want people to like you, you want to be a yes man or yes, woman, you know,you want to be a go getter.

[00:02:41] You want to be a team player. Soyou say, yes, you just don't want to say no because you don't want to hurtpeople's feelings or you don't have the confidence to stand up to somebody andtell them, no, you don't want to disappoint people. I get it. But you have tolearn to say no, if you want to reclaim your time and your energy.

[00:03:04] And of course reclaiming yourtime and energy by saying no. Guess what? That will help you be productive aswell. So learn to say no, here is the key to saying no, don't make it personal.Don't make it personal. Did you hear what I said? The key to saying no. Is notto make it personal. All right. So how do we do this?

[00:03:45] We need to have a system. So weneed to have a system to one eliminate interruptions and to manageinterruptions because we can't 100% eliminate interruptions. They're going tohappen, but. When we have a system, then when we say no, we can blame it on thesystem versus ourselves. In other words, we don't have to make it personal.

[00:04:20] So when we tell somebody, no,I'm sorry, you can't do that. That's can, they can take it personally, but ifyou say, I'm sorry, I have to work on this project. Tomorrow, I can't make itwork or I'm sorry. I need to run that through my calendar to see if I can fitit in, see how you're kind of pushing things off onto the system versus makingit a personal rejection of this person's request.

[00:04:58] So learn to say no in anon-personal way. And here's a couple of ways you can do this. Somebody comesup to you or sends you an instant message at work says, Hey, can you help mewith this? You can say, Hey, thank you for thinking of me. I would love tohelp. Will you send me an email so that I can look at this when I have time?

[00:05:24] Or you can say, I would love toconsider helping you with this project, but I need to look at it a little bitcloser. And assess if I have the bandwidth to help you, please email me and Iwill make sure to get back to you. My favorite way to say no kindly is to say,please email me. So I don't forget.

[00:05:49] Oftentimes what you'll find ispeople won't email you and it turns out they figured it out on their own andthey didn't need your help. So if that happens to you because of this littletip, you're welcome. Um, But seriously say, please email me and I'll get backto you. Or I would love to consider this.

[00:06:10] Let me think about it and getback to you by tomorrow morning. Um, again, you're not telling the person nowyou're saying I'm going to consider it. I just need to run it through myworkload and my, my bandwidth and see if I can make it work. Um, another thingyou can say is yes, I would love to help. Can you send me an email with moreinformation?

[00:06:43] That way you are saying yes, butthen if they send you an email with more information that causes you to not beable to, or, or informs you in a way that you're not able to actually help,then you can kindly and gently say no in that, in that instance, now I will saythere are times when you're going to need to firmly say no, and you're going tohave to redirect the person that always asks you for help.

[00:07:09] And so on, that may be somethinglike Susan. I really appreciate your team player attitude. And I reallyappreciate being asked to participate in help with these projects. However, dueto my current workload and my job. Description and role responsibilities. I'munable to help with this type of thing in the near future.

[00:07:37] So maybe revisit with me in afew months. So again, that's an example of being a little bit more affirmsaying kindly saying, okay, you're going to have to stop asking me to help youbecause that's not my job. All right. So. That's that's the first step toguarding your time is learning to say no, let's talk about the next one.

[00:08:03] Uh, eliminating interruptions.There's no reason that you should have a notification on your phone, on youriPad, on your desktop with a little Dean. Every time an email comes in or everytime a, uh, instant message comes through. Turn off those notifications. Youshouldn't have a Dean, a little red dot a.

[00:08:24] Slide out, pop up notification.Every time someone sends you a message. Okay. So the, one of the best ways toeliminate interruptions is to literally change your settings on all your apps,to where you do not get notifications. And you can maybe, maybe there are somethings where you have to absolutely. You cannot miss these notifications.

[00:08:47] That's a rare case, depending onthe industry you're in, depending on the role you're in. Uh, but typicallythat's pretty rare. So turn off your notifications on your phone. Um, anotherthing that I would do especially is eliminate. To, to eliminate interruptionsis to turn your, uh, if you have an Apple iPhone, for example, they have a donot disturb feature, which I'm sure Google does as well.

[00:09:14] Uh, on Android or whatever phoneyou have basically a do not disturb schedule. So every night at 9:00 PM. Myphones automatically switches to a do not disturb mode, which means I will notget any, um, notifications about anything from anyone, even phone calls, texts,et cetera. Um, and then at 7:00 AM, it turns that off.

[00:09:41] So that way I don't get woken upin the middle of the night and that way I don't get a bunch of pings at 10 o'clockwhen I'm trying to wind down. So again, turn off the notifications. Use thingslike do not disturb modes on your devices. Another thing you could do, um, atwork to eliminate interruptions, when you have your instant message tool,whether it's Microsoft teams or Slack or whatever your company uses Jabber orwhatever you use for internal communications, um, depending on the role thatyou have.

[00:10:20] Don't set your status to active.In other words, don't go online with your status. Stay offline. You'll besurprised at how many people still reach out to you, even though you areoffline. And typically there. More important when you're offline, then whenyou're online all the time. So I haven't had my green available online dot onin years and I don't plan on turning it on.

[00:10:56] It's one of the best ways toeliminate interruptions. Um, literally eliminate them because people think, Oh,you're offline. I'm not going to bug you unless it's really important. Allright. Managing interruptions. So this goes back to kind of learning to say no,um, as well, but you're going to have interruptions.

[00:11:15] You're going to turn yournotifications off. You're still going to check. You have to check your email.You're still going to check your, I AMS. People are still going to swing byyour desk or ask you to hop on a zoom call. And so you have to manage them. Sothe best way to manage them, um, is to have a system to assimilate theinterruptions into the system so that you don't forget things so that you canquickly deter those interruptions into a system.

[00:11:45] Uh, and that way you can proceedwith what you're working on. So a couple system, examples, I will often emailmyself, um, But my favorite thing to do, like I mentioned earlier, is to askpeople to email me. So please email me and I will make sure to get back to you.Now, if some people email you and you do this and you don't get back to them,then you're going to lose trust.

[00:12:13] And they're going to keepbugging you because you're not responding to their emails. So just a pro tipthere respond to their emails. If you tell them and ask them to email you, um,Another thing is maybe you have a task management software, like an, a sauna ora Trello or a base camp. Somebody comes along and they have a request orinterrupt you related to a project, throw it in this project management toolthat you use and make sure it's documented and then get back to what you wereworking on.

[00:12:46] You don't have to stop whatyou're doing and actually accomplish. The tasks that somebody else isinterrupting you about, however, you typically do, you need to assimilate thattask into whatever system you use. Now, personally, I, I hate paper. I hateprinting. I hate having a bunch of papers sitting around.

[00:13:09] However, there is, is one usecase for paper that I still to this day will use. And I swear by it, uh, alwayshave a post-it note. Pad or a notebook or even just a scrap piece of paper anda pen. Doesn't have to be a lot, just, just a few near you on your desk, um, atyour laptop, whatever. Maybe it's a note on your phone.

[00:13:36] Maybe it's a note app on yourphone or, or an app on your computer. Maybe you type it in that way. Whateverit is when somebody shows up to you for me, I'll have paper next to my laptop.I might be in the middle of something. I might have a bunch of windows pulledup working on something, instead of trying to move over to a different windowand email myself, or add it to a project management tool.

[00:13:58] I'll just grab a pen, write iton the piece of paper, and then I can deal with it later again. You don't wantto have to remember things. That's part of the reason interruptions. Just getus out of whack when we're trying to manage our time and be productive is becausewe try to remember them on our heads and we don't get them down.

[00:14:19] And then we're thinking aboutthe thing that somebody interrupted us about. But when we do that act ofwriting it down or documenting it, it kind of gets it out of our brain so thatwe can keep doing what we were doing. So. To recap to guard your time. You gotto learn to say no, uh, use the system as an excuse.

[00:14:43] Don't make it personal. Say,well, you know, I only do meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Okay. Well, when youdecline a meeting on Tuesdays and Thursdays, it wasn't important or urgent andyou say, sorry, I can't make that work. That makes it a little bit morepersonal. To some people versus saying, yeah, I don't do meetings on Tuesdaysand Thursdays, but I'd be happy to meet on a Wednesday.

[00:15:08] Um, eliminate interruptions,turn off your notifications and then manage interruptions. Always have a systemwhen these things come to you, um, so that you can get it off offloaded or outof your brain. So you can keep working on what you're working, working on,because that's the key to why interruptions again.

[00:15:30] Are so detrimental to ourproductivity is because they take us away from what we were working on in themoment. All right. That's key. Number four, guard your time. Learn to say noeliminate interruptions and manage interruptions. The next episode is key.Number five, be productive with your time. So we're going to talk about how toactually be productive with that time that you've now.

[00:15:57] Earned and guarded andscheduled. So stay tuned. What you just heard was seven keys to reclaiming yourtime, energy and productivity, a Himalaya learning audio course. Be sure tocheck out all of the other exclusive courses in the Himalaya app or on himalaya.com.