Too much learning is good, but…

Particularly in the West, we may take decades engaged in learning in schools and other institutions, besides what we learn at home, on the streets or temples. And it is not a bad thing.

In fact, learning as a desire, habit or hobby should be part of our personality, specially in our fast-changing world. Even to buy a new cell phone or going to a supermarket after a few months is a challenge.

The reason is that with every change, we need to adapt and to do that in a successful way, there is no alternative to learning. Well, maybe suffering…

And this is the age of changes, they are everywhere for every reason. So, it should be the Age of Learning too.

Why is not so? Why do we see more and more illiterate people in various areas of work or society? There are a few reasons for that.

The first one is to not follow changes. As the learning curve can be quite steep, it may be a wise decision, but not always practical, due to professional or personal commitments. It is the case of many parents having to learn the lingo of social media, so they can help their kids navigate in this new world, even though they may not want to do.

The second reason is that the learning curve is too hard for some people because of their age... There is a paradigm that connects age and change, which means many people just not even try to learn something because they are old. This means they will have difficult to use transportation, to withdraw some money and even to travel. This is not true and there are plenty of examples of people who have challenged these misconceptions. True, it may be hard for some people, but it is possible with some effort.

Another reason is that there is no time to catch up. It happens a lot for those who work in a fast-paced industry, as things can change brusquely and there is no time to really try and grasp what is going on. However, I do remember a former CEO who decided to take a course on accounting after his company suffered a fraud by their accountant. Discernment will guide those people to dedicate their time in learning what is really important, otherwise leadership will help to have the right people surrounding them.

Don’t think you cannot learn. You can, just understand how. And keep on learning…

 

An anchor that may ease the weight of the clock

It is impossible to really understand the pressure of time in the present society we live, as it is very different than before.

How was it before like? In fact, many of us forgot the fact there was a clear routine separating job and home, and that is an essential ingredient of a good time management: getting ready, leaving for work, working – eventually, talking with friends or relatives – leaving the workplace, arriving at home, doing more things there and going to sleep – sometimes, working a bit…

Nowadays: before going to work, a person is often responding emails or messages (several sources just as WhatsApp, SMS or Telegram). In fact, there is not a clear line division between work and life outside work.

Besides deadlines and terms been much clearer then, two important principles of time management are to have a free time period slotted into your schedule and what we could call an anchor, which is something that will happen no matter what, like dinner with the family.

These principles had many uses, one of them was to relieve some pressure of time as the person knew he would have  to work hard for a certain amount, but later, there will be free time; or at such a such an hour, they will have to be somewhere else.

Nowadays, with a fluid sense of time, things get very confusing and much discipline is necessary along with self-control to keep the anchors, the almost legendary dinner with the family which, when it would happen, will be accompanied by lots of cell phone checking and talks related to work.

This means time is the same as before, but pressure is bigger on everyone’s mind. The clock seems to be heavier now and years look shorter. Soon, retirement is coming…

What to do? Going backwards or revert a trend is a difficult, but to re-establish those two principles is not as complicated as it sounds. Maybe an easy way is to merge both principles…

1. Just check what you will do as free time or time for the self – to run, reading a book or meditating. Be a dreamer, but balance that with the reality of your resources and interest.
2. Now, think of when you are going to do it. Be neither too ambitious in terms of time, nor too shy.
3. Lastly, convert those into important anchors in your weekly or monthly schedule. Be as accurate as possible (day, time), but keep your schedule flexible, don’t schedule it too tightly.

Ah, don’t forget to organize yourself for that:

• De-clutter your schedule of other things and not only for that time – try it for the whole afternoon and evening…
• Tell others about it. If you are shy about what you are going to do or you don’t want others to join you in that, just tell them you will be busy during that time.
• It is good to plan things drop by drop… Keep balance.

Always remember that to manage time is not only a way to be more productive, but also to enjoy more personal time.

A leader’s clock is always ticking, but with no pressure - Reason 57

Time harasses people, or it looks that way when it is a Monday morning or Friday evening and people rush and rush, from everywhere to anywhere.  Add to that 24 hours news and entertainment, cheap communication tools and an endless exploration of the world, and we have a population that is busier than its ancestors.

This sense of ‘busyness’ has become the source of illness, as shown in an article[1] by blogger Scott Dannemiller, giving a general sense of powerlessness to people, as they are not able to fulfil a basic to-do list or to finish reading all the books on the shelf; after all, people are ‘too busy’ to do that.

For a leader, time is just a tool and so does not take the form of a burden.  This healthy relationship with omnipresent time gives her or him a more relaxed view of the world.  Besides, leaders have a competitive edge over other type of people, because they live without tension and so they can pay better attention to their duty, work or project.

(Excerpt from the book 82 Reasons to be a Leader)

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[1] Based on research as well Dannemiller’s personal experience, Busy is a Sickness describes with humour how to be busy is becoming an epidemic.   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-dannemiller/busy-is-a-sickness_b_6761264.html

Managing modern times

Time is fixed and rigid - every day of the year has 24 hours and all hours have 60 minutes. And so it goes.

However, as humans, the handling of these minutes and hours, those days and years, seconds and decades, is quite flexible and so the feeling that time gives us is also flexible. Who has not been in a 45-minute class that lasted 2 hours (in their head)? Or in a nice place, with this special person, a whole day that passed by in an hour?

But when we look at the times in which we live, with news that come 24 hours and changes that a few decades ago would take a decade to happen and today happen in a few months (or less), this inner flexibility traps us in the invisible hourglass that the human being uses to measure productivity, goals and life in general.

It's time to rethink how we handle time. There are several ideas that are in the air - perhaps the one that seems most interesting to me is the post-work society, that is, work as we know is disappearing; This implies that the time of many people that revolves around a closed space called office, is already changing.

Perhaps the main consequence is the level of stress, so it is necessary to remember time management is a matter of awareness. Thus, by working with that, we can soften the effects of the crazy rhythm that today makes us run and run, without reaching anywhere in the way you can say that’s it.

When it is said that class lasted a long time, it is that the consciousness was not aligned with the necessity of the moment: the student forgot about the importance of what she or he was receiving and was probably aware of other personal needs such as playing, working or being with his friends. That lack of alignment made time feels longer than in reality.

So, if you need to enjoy something you normally wouldn’t, detachment will give you exactly the experience, because you just observe it as if you were watching a movie in which there are scenes you don’t like, but they are important for the whole context. Detachment helps you to be present.

So, by aligning consciousness with reality, by immersing yourself in what is happening – as in the case of that last day close to an interesting person – time accelerates. But there are situations we don’t want to happen fast as enjoyment may be associated to longer moments. The solution is to go deep, leaving the superficiality the situations provide. In this way, one hour will feel like one hour, or even more.

Last thing: if you want to avoid the pain of that moment, love will help. The consciousness of love will make time fly. You do not need to have love for what is happening... The simple act of unconditional love, of forgiving who causes you harm and wishing them the best will cause something unpleasant to be experienced as if it was positive. And fast.

Therefore, awareness is the key for handling time as we know and as we feel. Try it…

Time management in unmanageable times

When I was just starting to work on IT, trying to understand computers and users, my job was pretty boring... So, I got distracted with some booklets I found scattered around. They came from a Time Management course my boss took and two things stroke me: first, the interesting ideas and, second, how my boss just ignored them...

Time management is a wonderful tool and an incredible theory, but its use in the practical life, a VERY BUSY practical life, is not so easy for it demands discipline and focus.

Besides, some of the champions in Time Management consider their success based on their ability in managing their time and not in its results. Life, especially corporate and business life, is not happy with a manager, a coach or a CEO who is able to manage his or her time very well... Others would want to see an outcome for that.

Results are quite hard to be experienced and one of the reasons is the unmanageable times you are living. We are living a very particular period of our history, a time that Peter Drücker, a consultants' prophet, has foreseen: a time we are not sure what is going on and we are less sure what will happen in the future.

We can go and make changes in our way of managing times (as I am doing this year), but still we cannot catch up with reality as it was probably more possible twenty years ago.

What to do then? Just flow and let it be? Or maybe creating even another tool to help you managing your time? I would like to explore that…

Let's talk about consciousness. Since I have seen those booklets, I have started my own way of managing time, which helped me to create a basis for courses and seminars I give. My main focus, however is not the method as it is, but the awareness of time the person has to develop.

As humans, we have created a very complex way of considering time. Although we can understand easily concepts as VERY SOON or LATE, we are ruled by a psychological sense of time rather than a real one. For instance, if you enjoy a two-days holiday somewhere, a place where you are happy and everything works fine, you will feel the time is very SHORT, even though it is the same time as when you had to work and finish your company accounts, which probably looked as very LONG.

The trick in Time Management is to reconcile your own perception of time with others' perception and the real clock-time. That means you need to do three things:

• Strength your own leadership. The only way to do something as mentioned before and survive in the process is when you are a leader. Although there are many concepts of leadership, three things are important in relation to Time Management, and you can cultivate them: your self-control, your own sense of being an example and a clear picture of your vision of the present and future for both, yourself and the organization you are leading.
• Value your own values. Rushing around or procrastinating do not only affect your health and others' patience, it may also affect your values. For a check-up on your values and, in relation to Time Management, check these three values to see if they are being put into action or just serving as a decoration for your speeches: patience will help you when others are not committed enough, perseverance will help you to educate others and try again, and introspection (or calmness)will help you to check your own commitment and make the needed changes.
• Use real methods. Ah, that is a must!! You can take as many courses of Time Management (want my cell phone number?) or attend to a thousand seminars, and yet, all of it may be is inapplicable to your reality. Ask three questions and make the necessary improvements: is what I am doing aligned with my needs? Are we, other people around me and i, really experiencing benefit by using these methods? Is there any way i can manage time better?

Well... time is up!! Get up and start to apply your own consciousness into your time.

Methods for managing time

Time Management is a kind of modern science, offering multiple tools and methods to deal with what seems unmanageable for many: time, agenda and productivity. But from a humanistic point of view, there are effective ways to handle this.

While time management focuses mostly on managing your clock and time, 24 hours per day by generating complex agendas, humanistic approach focuses on the consciousness of the time, the attitude we have towards it and proactive habits.

To handle it, the ideal is a perfect balance between understanding the URGENCY that time imposes on you and the IMPORTANCE of the different events. The correlation between the two generates what we call PRIORITIZATION. In other words, you have time to do everything you want by understanding importance and urgency as it is easier to allocate energy and time. Although it sounds logical it is not that easy to do; we tend to spend more time doing things we like, for instance, reading this blog, than doing that important project for your job... Why? Because in our consciousness, importance and urgency are not registered, except if there is a danger around. Consciousness records not only what you know, but that with which it is aligned according to values and goals in life, and most of the time, those thinks we like...

We need to have several dialogues with the self, explaining actions, and establishing its importance and urgency. The attitude is vital for success in time management and this inner dialogue will help with that.

And talking about time management, what about the collective time? Although a balanced approach that gives importance to time, but without generating stress, helps the person in managing their energy and effectively fulfill their commitments, but to manage the collective time, which is basically not being late for meetings and how to deal with the others being late, the individual needs a different approach. It requires a different way of thinking about time by using technology to avoid problems and conflicts, while generating the positive energy that is needed for working together to function effectively.

What I have mentioned up to this point will be better if you develop certain proactive habits in your life as simple as getting up to meditate 45 minutes daily in the morning. These habits are considered proactive because they enable you to organize your energy and time, creating a positive chain reaction during the day. It is a kind of anchor for your time.

By working on your consciousness, the bottom line is that you will the time is not your enemy, but an excellent partner for your success.

How to talk to yourself and how THAT is a the key of being a powerful leader?

If you see someone talking to himself or herself, you probably will give him or her a wide berth. Crazy, right?

Maybe not. Maybe she or he just wants to be a good leader. More precisely, a POWERFUL leader.

Yes, you need skills and training. An MBA won't hurt and if you have the support of your family and friends, that will be so helpful. However, a real and powerful leader requires more than that. Much more.

How much more? In fact, only the leader can know that, and for it, the leader requires sometime inside his own heart and head to understand the self.

If you are that leader, you can use many methodologies, according to the need and to your own personality:

• Time of solitude. For some people, that is enough. Just sometime alone and he or she is able to figure out many of the questions popping into the mind, or finding those slippery solutions. It is important to tell everyone who needs to know that you will be performing this exercise; if you feel shy to say that you just want sometime alone, just go somewhere else. Ah, don't forget to switch off all gadgets!
• Writing is understanding. Some people like to write. Peter Senge said at some point just allow the pen to flow on the paper. If you are high-tech, the equivalent will be to allow your fingers fly over the keyboard; anyway, writing clears the mind and allows many realizations to emerge. Merging solitude and writing can work most of the time, otherwise just be aware to write at a place that people will respect your time to do it.
• Talking to yourself. If you have the time and space, hearing your own voice can help you to understand your attitude and mental patterns. Perhaps, you can find a good listener who is able to nod to you from time to time, but allow you to do all the talk. No need to say to avoid public spaces using this technique...
• Contemplating. If you can, chose a beautiful natural spot, or just the view from your window. And stare at it. Allow your mind to flow freely, with no guide or schedule, and merge into the landscape you are watching. Background music can be useful, but again, tell others about what you are doing, otherwise they will wonder what is going on with you. Sometimes, during contemplation, you will have excellent ideas. Try to not write them, but use other skills like drawing, as that will help the idea to emerge in a more powerful way.
• Meditating. Meditation is a powerful tool - it is my favorite way to talk to myself. Check a further post on Meditation for leaders.

After this exercise, share. Share with some friend, people who collaborates with you or some colleagues. Enjoy the feedback and feel the power in your leadership.

Changing your life style

During a lifetime, how many times a person changes its life style? Hair (size, color, style), clothes (formal, casual, elegant  and even values (economy, joy, love for family) are changed so many times in our life. Most of the time is under the influence of something external.

Advertisement takes advantage of that, sometimes being so powerful that helps the change to happen. For instance, the number of people who acquired a smart phone or tablet, which changed their life style in many ways, just because of a few ads here and there, and the implicit suggestion that by having those you will be smarter, cooler or anything like that.

Sometimes your life style is changed due to a need. With the present economic crisis, many people of richer countries are learning to live a simple life.

Well, what about changing life style based on a personal decision? That happens a lot among people who decide to take a spiritual path (like me) or in relation to personal health, but it can also apply on cases when the person acknowledges the need of a certain habit to be part of his or her life.

Habits are not created just like that - not in 21 days or one month. Some habits - like brushing your teeth or waking up at a certain times - can take years to be created. However, habits are very fragile as they normally rely on external factors - brushing teeth when mom and dad are around, or waking up later during holidays. To make a habit last longer, you have to change your own life style - carrying toothbrush around all the time or schedule early yoga practice during holidays.

Time management in its more useful way takes the shape of a habit, something the user is not even conscious but it is there, monitoring every act of the user's life. For the habit to be part of a person's life and to show its benefits, the person has to change their life style.

What is the best life style for a person who is concerned about time management? There is no "right" answer for that, but there are a few factors I have been observing along the years:

• Fashion, hair and clothes take a very pragmatic approach. One interesting case was a Brazilian senator who used to have EXACTLY seven EQUAL suits. OK, let's not exaggerate; but it helps if your fashion is an ally for your TM habits, or if you schedule a longer time for dressing at least.
• Clocks everywhere! Hook's nightmare, but the reality is that most "TM people" have more than one clock or watch: bedroom, over the table, kitchen, office desk, wrist, etc. As it's a life style we are talking about, take advantage of that to have the best or the most beautiful pieces.
• Diary, agendas, schedules. A "TM person" moves according to a fix table of activities, right? Not really. In this case, you have to understand the way you are and see how you want to handle this. I myself have: one schedule (GCal), another informal To-Do list (StickNotes), a prioritization scheme using draft paper and, when I lack a gadget, a small notebook to take notes of appointments and incorporate to the rest. Crazy, right? But it works, it helps my very flexible life style.
• Relaxation periods. You will find very important, to keep the balance, to have a fixed period of relaxation, which can take the form of yoga, walk on the park or sitting with your kids every Friday night.

Hope this helps you in your process of keeping your Time Management as part of your life, not at some course book. Take care!

Prioritization, such a long word...

When you go to a TM course, one thing you will learn is how to prioritize and, at least in my case, how to spell that word...!

In reality, prioritization is natural to human beings. If you want to go deep about how we work mentally, I suggest the book Thinking, fast and slow, by Daniel Kahneman, which gives a deep insight on human mind. It helped me to understand the reality: we always have a priority.

Even when we are children, we prioritize between tasks (hug mom or dad first?), objects (teddy bear or a rattle?) and even food (mom's milk or baby food?). That helps us to decide (hug mom, teddy bear and baby food) and becomes part of our personality as a whole.

But, when we are already grown-up, it is time to check how we prioritize. So, it is not that you will learn how to do it - you are going to RElearn how to do it. This time, you are going to use what I call Prioritization Criteria.

For instance, in my case, I have two basic criteria: impact and easiness. Impact helps me to give more energy to those things which are really important and that will generate an effect in my life, or in a project. But it is important for me to go easy - so, I chose things which are not so complicated, or that don't demand time. The sum of both criteria has helped me to write this blog post before posting new pictures in pinterest, for instance.

What are your criteria? Even better: which criteria will help you to do tasks in such an order that you won't feel exhaustion or boredom?

Both questions I think are important. The first one will help you to understand your own way to prioritize. The second will help to understand the BEST way to prioritize.

Your personal work will be to shift from one to another. That requires discipline, deep understanding of any tasks and appreciation for all the time you will be saving through that.

Take care!

Real meaning of all

Following up with time management, I would like to tell you that recently, we at last bought a plasma TV.  It's shockingly slim, really, very flat and elegant  And I feel most of our present life is a bit like that: slim (life, not body!), elegant and... flat. At some point I have heard that the present society is a few inches thick and deep.

And the tendency is that things will go even flatter. Well, no problem with THINGS, but what about us? What about me?

I did try to watch House of Lies. As a business consultant, I should feel insulted by the few clips I've watched, but no, I think that is just a reflection of all that is going on around us.

And let's not talk about news in paper, TV, radio, INTERNET...!

So, what about this line of thought: if what all of us do is to spend more and more time, struggling to keep with the pace of situations, and if all situations are lacking of depth, why not associate these two things? Or: if I go deeper and deeper, perhaps I will spend less time and I will struggle less.

That's the essence of living spiritually in today's world. Although some people chose to isolate themselves, most of spiritual people nowadays live a normal life: they have to work hard, they have families to sustain, they reach success and they enjoy material things. Main difference is found in the attitude, as when a person is not working with his or her own spirituality they will do the same, but they will always want more and more. A spiritual person knows limits very well and at the same time, is not limited by anything except that she or he chooses.

Hummm... last phrase turned to be a little zen. Listen, I have been working out my spiritual muscles for 30 years, and I can feel the differences between people with a spiritual approach and people with a non-spiritual approach, and it is not so much visible. It is something invisible that is there, hidden in their eyes and their outlook. It is not their faith, or lack of faith, but it is merged in their actions, you can just feel!

Still zen? Anyway, when you start to realize the meaning of all (and I mean all: job, family, body, habits, desires, etc.), then you will start naturally to manage your time in a different way. It will be natural as you will know the importance of each thing and how much energy you can dedicate to that.

There are several tools for that and you can use them all at the same time, if you need it:

• Talk to someone wiser than you. Part of the path to manage your time includes of acknowledging others' wisdom. Have a nice dialogue with another person, check with him or her, their opinion about you and the way you spend your time. Listen deeply.
• Read books wisely. Most books in my life have taught something because I went after it, even very shallow stories. There is always something to learn if you are wise enough to learn from it.
• Contemplate. There are few experiences in life more gratifying than contemplative moments. And it is so easy, just stare at something and let your mind do the job, detaching you from the present situation and allowing you to merge in that you are looking at (or visualizing), and understanding its depth and significance.
• Meditate. Probably this is a few notches higher than contemplation as it is a deeper experience. Think of contemplation as watching a swimming pool and touching into it with the mind; meditation is jumping on that swimming pool fully with the mind.

Hope that works for you as it works for me. Take care!

How to do it on time?

Time management is, for some, the most successful seminar in the world. At least, for the trainers, consultants, facilitators, teachers, professors, coaches, and the whole bunch of people who teaches, facilitates, and, well, you know it...

However, is it the most successful seminar for the participants?

As we saw in a former post (January 6th.), we are now "time jugglers", and I do feel no seminar, lecture or anything related to human development can solve the problem. It can help - and quite often it helps - but what is needed is something else.

First of all, all of us have to understand the real value of time and the meaning of each minute we pass. That requires reflection and contemplation - don't worry, it will be a time very well invested as at the extent we understand our own time we will use it in a wiser way.

Second, prioritization has to become something we cannot go without it. Many people just allow themselves to react when emergencies emerge, or according to a routine other people have planned to them. However, when we start to prioritize, we really become masters of our own time, we are able to make decisions that can impact our performance, relationships and even our self-esteem.

Third, a change in life style is needed so that the former points can work out their magic. There's one case I appreciate: Ricardo Semler and how he made an extreme decision in relation to his management style - time management was part of it. But, he needed to change his life style too, otherwise that won't work. Waking up early, creating limits to read emails or making up time to catch up with reading - all of that will influence, support and help understanding the value of time and how to prioritize.

Fourth, a constant dialogue with the self helps. It can happen via meditation, writing or simply sitting down so that we can refocus our life. Time management in times like these we are living is not only a procedure, it requires deep thought and deep actions so that we don't feel we are being drowned in a sea of time, but rather than that, we are enjoying the wonders time can make in our lives.

Doing all that and we can easily manage our social lives, where many people's time managements intersected, clash or never meet.

The time we begin...

Time is something that does not exist in itself, and yet it moves the world.

It is not easy to keep track of time, which is something that also takes time. Besides, there are activities that look like a lot of time was spent on them, while others seem to have lasted so little, and yet both have consumed the same amount of time in your watch.

At present, we are more like jugglers trying our best to not lose focus while having too many things to deal with. And the effect on the economy and the society as a whole?

It is not clear on how time, and the way we are using it now, is affecting economy or society. Time is invisible, but we can see employment, hospital and hotel occupation, etc. There are some signs of that effect:

• Time overlapping. By "overcrowding" yourself with activities you probably won't be able to fulfill at your maximum potential, you generate false expectations in your clients and providers, feeding into a chain of other people who are doing the same. An example of that is seeing when an economy starts to recover and people were already employed in something else. When they go back to their "proper" profession, they just letting all other jobs go, provoking salaries going up or down.
• Time misuse. That is a classic: a team is the favorite to get a golden badge in a competition, with all the training, good coach and good players. But the night before they go out to have fun, arrive pretty late and their bodies are unable to recover enough. SILVER! I think the effect at least on the society is obvious... less encouragement related to that sport, tendency is to get silver or even less next time, and the effect in the economy related to it cannot be overseen.
• Time freezing. There are many ways it happens. For instance, a student can "freeze" himself or herself in that student attitude, not looking for a job or trying to create a career. That means many skilled professionals don't come to the professional field by waiting for the "right moment".

How to solve this "time puzzle"? How to keep pace with the society and others' time, and yet avoiding a negative impact? See next post...