Opinion: Master your minutes: Five tips for super-busy people

When did you last hear someone say, “I don’t have enough time?” If you’re like most professionals, it was probably today. Packed schedules, constant interruptions and endless fire-fighting create hurry-scurry stress that follows us from the office to our homes.

Here’s the truth we don’t want to admit: We share the blame. The core issue isn’t time shortage – it’s letting time control us, instead of managing it effectively.

Highly successful leaders, entrepreneurs and salespeople understand this. Most I know have transformed time management from anxiety into their greatest asset.

Here are five insights to help master your minutes.

1. Start with your “main thing” priority. Not every task deserves equal attention. Choose one overarching priority that guides your decisions, then build around it. Four or five key priorities for the year work well for most people. This isn’t your daily to-do list – it’s your master framework for spending your most valuable time.

Before saying yes to any task, pause and ask: “Does this bring me closer to my main thing?” If not, add it to your “won’t-do-right-now” or “don’t-do” list. Strategy expert Michael Porter said it best: “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”

Focus intensely on your best use of time. Be equally diligent about what you won’t spend time on.

2. Schedule with a scalpel. Time creep kills productivity. When everything becomes urgent, nothing truly is. Combat this by aligning your calendar with your critical objectives.

Consider one client’s sales rep who was promoted to GM of a new division. His performance earned the promotion, but he struggled in his first few months. Why? He allowed his schedule to become a frantic cycle of answering every question, tackling every problem, and putting out every fire. After receiving frank feedback, he restructured his approach. He carved out time for critical objectives and educated his staff on prioritizing issues that needed his immediate attention versus what could wait.

Don’t let the urgency of the small stuff snuff out the importance of your big stuff. Block out time wisely.

3. Capture every time fragment. Five to ten minutes between meetings isn’t dead time—it’s opportunity. These fragments might appear to be inconsequential, but they accumulate to 20-40 hours annually of additional productivity you might use for quick emails or texts, brief calls or updating contact information. I like to use some of my time fragments with the Notes function in my phone by brainstorming to-do lists, bullet points I’m thinking of for a speech or article, or a critical note I thought about for a client. Make smart use of time scraps. Wise advice suggests that if we look after the minutes, the hours will look after themselves.
4. Avoid the hyper-collaboration trap. Open-collaborative work environments often disguise productivity killers as teamwork. When leaders schedule meetings with undefined lengths, this careless approach can waste over 100 hours of collective productivity annually – even for smaller teams. People sit too long in meetings, and these excessive discussions become so routine that no one notices the drain.

My mentor in the training industry was a master facilitator. He scheduled tightly run meetings, sent agendas and prep notes in advance, moved efficiently through robust discussions, then ended on time. The result? Focused training and conversations, clear outcomes and respect for everyone’s time.

Be cautious about limitless discussions disguised as essential collaboration. Make every meeting minute count.

5. Interrupt the interruptions. Multiple studies over the years show that it takes several minutes to regain focus after an interruption. Protect your critical work by managing interruptions aggressively. Signal when you need undisturbed time. Turn off non-essential notifications. Create physical and digital barriers to maintain your focus-intensive work time. That’s not to say every minute must be used for work because we also need time for rest and connections. It’s a healthy balance we want.

Time doesn’t have to control you. Master your minutes by focusing on your main priority, scheduling strategically, capturing small time fragments, avoiding endless meetings and protecting your focus on the most important objectives. Anyone can transform time from a source of anxiety into an asset.

Mark Holmes is a consultant, professional speaker and author of “Selling to ELON! Understand, Communicate and Sell to Unique Personality Types,” and he’s president of Springfield-based Consultant Board Inc. and SalesRevenueCoach.com. He can be reached at mark@salesrevenuecoach.com.