A New Perspective on Time

Time. It’s always something that we are trying to make the most of. It’s always fleeting, disappearing into history, never to be re-grasped.

The last few months have been very busy for us both in terms of Bullseye Productions NZ and personally. The time pressures of travel, conferences, school holidays and the normal workload have meant that some things have had to go on the backburner. It’s not so easy to write a blog or do the accounts when the kids are around with their friends making lots of noise and wanting MORE food every other minute. That’s the reality of life!

In amongst all of this craziness though, we have managed to pick up a real gem about time management.

Last week we were at the Arise National Leadership Conference in Wellington. There were many inspirational speakers but for me, one of the pieces of gold came out of one of the smaller elective sessions. Brent Cameron from Christchurch was the speaker and he shared the theory of the Time Management Quadrant (that we’ve heard before in Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People).

I think (rightly or wrongly) that most people in business are familiar with this matrix. It’s about focusing on the important things and using your time where it matters the most using the factors of Urgency vs Importance. Obviously the non urgent, important things are where we should be operating from as business owners and we shouldn’t waste our time on the non important, non urgent matters.

Usually when I have heard this speech I have heard that the non urgent, important quadrant includes such things as direction, relationship building, long term planning. Marketing, blogs and new learning also fall into this category. All of this is absolutely true.

But what I heard this time was different. What I heard about in this quadrant was about vision, dreaming, and what excites you. The more I thought about it the more this made sense to me. These are the things that bring passion to your business. Without passion it’s just a job. A means to an end. A task.

When you can give time to the things you love, thinking big, thinking creatively and strategizing for the future, that’s when you’re using time effectively.

Another gem that Brent Cameron shared was that “if someone else can do it, you shouldn’t do it”. These tasks can fall into any of the other categories. Ahhh. The art of delegation. A few weeks ago we employed Micky. He is our new Junior Editor and already is showing great promise! Welcome to the team Micky! He is now able to get through many tasks that have previously absorbed a lot of our time. With him on our team, we are now able to give more focus to the things that matter! SMART MOVE! It’s actually surprising how quickly this has made an impact.

So as I have reflected on all of this I feel that we are ready to take on the world! We have dreams and visions and love what we do here at Bullseye Productions NZ. Watch this space. Great things are ahead!