I wish I could do it differently.
In his book TimePower, productivity consultant and teacher Charles R. Hobbs wrote,
“Interruptions are not your biggest time wasters; disunification is. Rationalising, and thus not living compatibly with (your) highest truths; that’s your greatest time waster. If, in your planning time, you work to bring performance into line with (your) unifying principles, then you are free to move on to other things, and you carry a power with you that you cannot get in any other way.”
The message is that performing in line with your highest personal standards, as set by yourself, wastes less time than fighting them. What do I mean, and where does the first line of this article relate?
I prided myself on doing a good job – I strove for excellence. But if you spoke to any of my managers, they would add the caveat that I visibly did that when I was doing what I wanted to be doing. If called upon to do something else – well, I’d do it, but there’d oft be much moaning and gnashing of teeth and procrastination.
That was because I failed to notice that sometimes ‘my job’ wasn’t just what I wanted to be doing, it was what my supervisors needed doing. My frustration at being interrupted flowed into plain sight.
Oh, that I could go back having noted Hobbs’ observation, and truly accepted it. That I could do the great job without the emotional weight of frustration that undermined my enjoyment of the work that I was doing, which was truly meaningful not just to me (if I’d paused to think about it objectively) but also the public and organisation that I served.
(Don’t get me wrong – I served them well, as far as they could see!)
Perhaps I was jaded by the reality that for every enjoyable task there is always a frustrating administrative side to it! And someone who found that as exciting as I did arresting criminals. And who felt it to be as important to them as I felt it unimportant to me. Perspectives.
Hobbs’ message, from a time management perspective, is
Do what needs to be done, in the way it needs to be done, at the time it needs to be done, whether you want to do it or not. And while acknowledging you don’t want to do it, do it with the same levels of effort and enthusiasm you do everything else – because the emotional weight of a negative approach just isn’t worth the strain.
And serve that intention to be happier with the dirty jobs by learning how to properly manage your work so that it isn’t stressful, because you have physical and emotional control over it.
I wish I’d said that in 2006………..
Police Time Management 