Staying On Track When You’re Deluged With Demands
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had clients complain, “How can I stay on track with what I want to accomplish for the day when there are so many demands - often unexpected - on me?”
Multiple demands competing for our attention seems to be the order – or more to the point, the disorder – of the day. You know them well - personal or professional life, patient needs or the bottom line, administrative or clinical responsibilities, turf battles, adminis-trivia, too little time, not enough money, personal time vs. family time. The sheer volume of demands can create insidious stress which further adds to the challenges of effective productivity and maintaining a sense of well-being.
Add to this the ever-increasing rate of change and information generation/overload coming at us every day, and you’ve got the perfect storm. Just the act of putting this on virtual paper makes me feel short of breath!
And the more energy we devote to managing and staving off overwhelm, the less reserve we have when an urgent or emergent situation breaks through our chronic state of barely controlled chaos. Or the chronic state can become an acute problem, as with one of my clients who had months of charting that needed to be completed in order to submit the billing prior to the end of the year. By the time November rolled around, he was facing a veritable avalanche of work.
Why standard time management solutions often don’t work
Time management has become an industry unto itself. Perhaps you’ve purchased books, attended programs, and made attempts to implement what you’ve learned yet, like my client, you find yourself still trying to keep the floodwaters from crashing over the sea-wall.
This is a real case of buyer beware – what many traditional time management tools and programs don’t tell you is how to match your personality style and preferences to their tools. And many of them are designed for certain personality preferences. If you fit that preference profile, the tool may work great for you but if you don’t, it’s a complete waste of money and/or effort.
As we well know from witnessing the devastation caused by hurricanes such as Katrina, Rita, and most recently, Ike, the first task in managing and preventing future crises is strengthening the integrity and size of the levees. A properly designed levee essentially says NO to storm surge. Likewise, you need a solid foundation of self-knowledge to withstand multiple competing demands without getting flooded to the point where you find yourself de-formed. This is your personal levee against flooding.
What is this self-knowledge that drives how we manage time, priorities and energy? It’s knowing your genetically-based personality strengths, preferences for managing information, decision-making, managing energy, and what intrinsically motivates you. Once you have a solid grasp of what those are, then you can design your own system for managing time, priorities, and energy.
Time management is really priority management and energy management. Clarity about your priorities at any given moment, and managing your energy optimally, are your guidelines – and your friend – in knowing to what you need and want to say Yes to and to what you can clearly say NO.
Building your personal sea-wall
Carl Jung (psychiatrist, contemporary of Freud) developed a powerful model of personality preferences, of which one dimension is “lifestyle orientation.” This has to do with how plan-ful vs. how spontaneous we like to be. A key thing to understand about personality preferences is that they’re just that – in the same way that you have a genetic preference for being right-handed or a southpaw, you have personality preferences. This doesn’t mean you can’t behave in ways that are non-preferences; however, it does mean that while you can get reasonably good at them, they will always cost you more psychic energy and won’t have the same level of ease and flow.
The Two Preferences: Judging and Perceiving
If you have a Judging preference, you’ll resonate with this list of words.
- Decided
- Ordered
- Structure
- Definite
- Scheduled
And if you have a Perceiving preference, this list is more likely to float your boat.
- Wait and see
- Flexible
- Adaptable
- Alternatives
- Spontaneous
Lifestyle Orientation and Strengthening Your Personal Sea-Wall
Judging: The strengths of the Judging preference folks are the ability to plan ahead, be prepared, be schedule-driven, and product-oriented. Their challenge is that they may not spend enough time gathering information to make the best decision and therefore act too quickly to bring closure to tasks. They can get really stressed when things don’t go as planned and unexpected interruptions or situations disrupt their schedule.
If you have a Judging preference for how you manage time and information, you want to practice and develop the ability to not jump to premature closure on decisions, as well as developing coping skills and strategies for when the unexpected inserts itself into your neatly planned day. Developing flexibility is your safeguard against flooding.
Perceiving: The strengths of the Perceiving preference are curiosity, flexibility, adaptability, and being process-oriented. Their challenge is they can get easily distracted and interested in all kinds of tangential though related information and because they have a preference for leaving things open-ended, they can keep moving the stake on the goal or the deadline.
If you’re of the Perceiving persuasion, you need to develop a sense of discipline and of timing, based on knowing what the priorities are and what’s realistic for you to do in a day. Determine what routines and structures give you enough discipline to stay focused on what’s important while allowing you the flexibility that keeps you motivated. Keep refining your sense of when enough information really is enough to make the decision. Creating discipline is your safeguard against finding yourself swimming out in the ocean.
The Bottom Line or Ultimate Sea-Wall
The ultimate sea-wall is the right balance of discipline and flexibility to achieve your goals and fulfill your core motivating values, for this is what gives us true happiness. Discipline to stay focused and mindful of what’s important at any given moment (this year, this month, this week, day, minute), and flexibility to adapt and be agile as you get new information and priorities change.
And in the final analysis, remember that balance is a dynamic state, fluid and ever-changing. Honor your natural rhythms and preferences by designing systems and structures that allow you to manage your non-preferences. In this way, you will be able to withstand the storm surges that come your way.
Want to learn more about your preferences and designing a strong sea-wall? Check out the fall special.