Time Matters: Make Your Communications and Story Count

On February 3, 2017, I faced one of the scariest events of my life. I was grilling hamburgers for my family (like I have thousands of times before). The propane tank leaked and a fire from the grill suddenly exploded. I am so thankful for my being inside the house (getting a spatula for 45 seconds) to flip the burgers (instead of the deck) when this occurred — if I hadn’t, I would not be writing this to you. My wife and three daughters did great and got out quickly and unharmed. We all made it, but our home suffered massive damage from fire and smoke, and dealing with this will be an ongoing process for many weeks ahead. Thus, it has taken a fair amount of time for me to be prepared to write a deep article about this experience and what is has inspired me to share. Here is what I want us to think about in this article. What is our story? What do we want people to remember about us? How do we communicate with others? Are we happy with it? Furthermore, there is a difference in truly living life and simply existing in life. All of this goes deeper than our job title, responsibilities or industry sector we work in. If you think about it, every day we add something to our life story. This can be good, bad or neutral. Our story develops each day based on how we live our lives, what we communicate, how we act, what we do and who we are. Life is a present. Life is the present. We cannot change the past nor can we alter the future. We can simply plan, to the best of our human ability, for the future and come to grips with the past. And, we can always seek to make others’ lives better in every encounter we have with them. Do you want to be this type of person? This type of organization? I know I do. Life can be stressful and difficult. We all have a lot on our plates. So, make someone feel special and make them smile. Say please and thank you — and mean it. Tell someone you care about them and help someone who is not expecting it. In short, become a special, gifted and caring communicator. If you think about it, each minute becomes an hour, which quickly becomes a day. In time, these days blend together to become months and years. The years add up, and even if we are healthy, we only have so many on this Earth. Time is the great equalizer of all mankind. You cannot get more of it, make it come back, or make it go faster or slower. Make it Count With 168 hours of time each week, how much of it is productive connectivity and how much is wasted time? Do we even think about this? Trust me, I am speaking to myself here as much as I am to you. No matter what your answer is, you must think about this concept. You see, what we do with our time is a choice. We can protect it, shelter it, waste it, share it, balance it, invest it, lose track of it, neglect it, use it wisely, etc. Again, I was reminded about this in a dramatic way a few months ago and want to take every opportunity to encourage others to make our world, communities and places of business better. How? By helping people grow, caring for them, quit focusing on things that don’t matter and making a difference in the “present” which is the only time we know we have. Start Doing How do we begin? I want to encourage us all to put things on our stop doing list so we will have time to add important items to our start doing list. How many things do you spend valuable time on that (if you are honest with yourself) really don’t matter? For example, I have tried for years to reply to every email I receive. In full transparency, I have never succeeded; however, that is not the point. I try to do this, as I care about people. Here is the problem: I can spend all day doing nothing else but answering hundreds of email/social media communications sent to me and get little else done. Instead, I have begun to prioritize and stop replying to things that do not need me to “chime in” with a “Thanks, Bob.” This would be nice, and the personal touch is indeed part of my brand, but multiplied by 300 takes many hours and is simply impossible to do. By taking these steps and adding to my stop doing list, I have freed up several hours of time each day by looking at things in new ways. This has allowed me to focus on better communications (start doing list) I seek to accomplish (next book, weekly radio show, video series etc.) As stated earlier, every hour counts, and we only have 24 each day. How about you? What are the time wasters that need to go on your stop doing list? And, what things need to move to your start doing list? You know the things that you talk about as being most important to you. Maybe you have said “someday I’ll do this” or “one day I’ll do that,” but you never get around to it. The time to act is now. Therefore, ditch the stuff that is getting in your way so you can focus on what matters most. This all becomes quite easy when you begin to think of things as if your life depended on it. Trust me. It is hard to go anywhere and not have someone tell us they are “drowning, slammed, swamped, buried, etc.” Why? They are short of time. So, let’s spend some time talking about time efficiency and effectiveness. How efficient and effective are we with our time? During my doctoral studies, I developed the Sauers’ “E” model to illustrate the importance of this concept. Our goal with time, as top performers, should be the green quadrant.  This means we are both highly efficient and effective with our time. Let’s take a closer look at what this means. If we are highly efficient with our use of time but low in effectiveness, this means we are quick at getting something done. However, such work (based on research and observation) is oftentimes done incorrectly or with an error. In contrast, if we are highly effective (accurate) in our use of time but low in efficiency, this often means we get the task done correctly but it takes us much longer to accomplish something than it should. Our goal is to have a balance of high efficiency and high effectiveness. I believe we value our time as the most important currency in our lives. It ranks much higher than money. After all, if you don’t have time, you can’t use your money. When people say that they did not have time to do xyz, I tell them they did not make time to do xyz. Remember, time is the great equalizer. Time does not care about your gender, race, creed, age or how much money you have. It does not care what house you live in, how many degrees you have, how many kids you have or where you work. Time is our most precious commodity, although many of us never take time (no pun intended) to reflect on this. If we are late and miss 30 minutes of a meeting — there is no way we can ever get that time back.  As an example, you are reading this article now and thus have chosen to do so instead of doing something else. I personally think reading this article was a good call on your part, but maybe I am biased. In all seriousness, our time is a gift, and what we do with it is a choice. My belief is simple: If we want something badly enough, then we will find a way to get it done; if we don’t, then we will find an excuse. Behind every problem lies a solution and behind each obstacle lies an opportunity. We have a choice, for the most part, on everything we do and where every hour of our day goes. I recommend we spend our time becoming excellent communicators. Why? This is/will be a part of every one of our life stories. We must “overcommunicate” to improve in all that we do. We must be more human to human (H2H) and authentic in each communication with another person online or offline. The communications process is a component of every aspect of life. Organizations are comprised of people and communications patterns are complex and complicated. So, we must overcommunicate. This means we use multiple channels to communicate to ensure everyone is on the same page and understands the same message. Let me take a moment and discuss the concept of “overcommunicating” a little further. It is vital to overcommunicate both online and offline to remind people of what has been discussed, decided, agreed upon, etc. More disagreements occur due to misunderstandings from miscommunications than anything else.  Therefore, the solution is to overcommunicate to such a degree to help eliminate such issues before they occur. It’s important to note that communications involve all processes between sender and receiver, so this does not mean we simply talk or write more. As stated earlier, our world is noisy and has a short attention span. In consulting with organizations and speaking to many groups across the country, I ask the following question to individuals: What level of “competence” is your communications?  Let’s look at the four common stages of communication development. (Remember, communications make up our days and time and thus determine our story.) Stages of Communication Development The first stage of communication development is referred to as the unconsciously incompetent segment. In this stage, a person is not aware of what s/he knows. Here, many people think they know more than they do and tend to overestimate their overall knowledge, skills and abilities. This can be dangerous.  The second stage of communications competence is being consciously incompetent.  In this stage, a person is now aware of how much s/he knows or does not know. It is during this second stage that a person realizes their need to learn, grow and improve — and is no longer over-confident. The third stage is referred to as being consciously competent. This is a good place for a person to be. In this stage, a person is cognizant of what s/he is doing well and effective at what s/he does. Think of a person in this third stage as one that is committed to “lifelong learning.” They are solid communicators but still need to think about it (not yet ingrained), and realize they must continue growing to reach the highest level. The final developmental segment is when a person is unconsciously competent. A person in this stage has become so competent that they no longer must think about their communications strategies in detail. Simply said, their competence is ingrained and overcommunicating to achieve success is second nature. This should be where we all want to get, albeit with the understanding that we should never stop learning and always strive to learn something new each day. If we desire to begin moving forward we must do several things. First, we must remember how precious our time is and to make each moment count. Second, we must remember our story matters and plays a role in our individual and organizational lives. People observe how we live, and I challenge us all to focus on things that matter the most. Moreover, communications are a two-way dialogue, not a one-way monologue, and have always been and will always be the key to making your time count and your story matter. We all get stuck on things that don’t matter and on things we should put on our stop doing list. But think about this: If you had one day to totally accomplish the things most important to you, what would you do differently?  Remember my story from the beginning. We can all take life for granted and have grandiose plans of what we will do in the future. However, as I was reminded a short time ago, there are no guarantees. You have an important story to communicate — and overcommunicate. Your time matters. Make all your interactions the best they can be, use your time wisely and communicate as effectively and efficiency as you can.