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Sticky Learning Lunches #38: Think You Don’t Need to Attend This Webinar?
This 7-part model will help you to find out what is wrong with your time management.
You will learn:
– Each of the 7 parts of the time management system.
– How each part is essential to creating an effective time management system.
– The holes that are exposed in your time management system by not having any one of the 7 pieces.
– Practical tips to incorporate any one of the 7 parts of the time management system.
– The strengths and weaknesses of your time management system.
You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:
Nathan Simmonds:
Good afternoon. Welcome to Sticky Learning Lunches Monday. Excited, brilliant day of the week. To kick things off, we are just gonna give it a few more minutes while the handful of people come in. Excited to see so many people this week, some new faces, some longstanding friends. Thank you for being here, Abby. Good to see you again. Andre. Thank you again. Colin, as always, I think you are the one person that has attended every single session pretty much.
Nathan Simmonds:
Stuart, thank you for being here. Karen, Howard, Gina, Gareth, Fabian. Vicki. Thank you, Victoria Moore, thank you for being here. Just gonna give it 20 seconds, maybe more, or the last few people are arriving. As always, let’s get ourselves set up for success. Mobile phones, hold ’em high, let’s get ’em on. Airplane mode, zero out the distraction. A hundred percent attention on you being here and investing in your mindset to help you deliver better results.
Nathan Simmonds:
Thank you, Colin. It’s appreciated, right? Also, hydration, herbal teas, coffees, whatever it is, you need water to make sure that you’re keeping your mind lubricated so that you can get the best from this. The third thing that we always do to set up the success in this situation is get yourself a fresh page for fresh thinking. So at the top of that page in your notepad, you’re gonna write keepers as always, keepers at the top. It’s the things that you want to remind yourselves about.
Nathan Simmonds:
It’s the things you wanna remember when you reread it. It’s those things that you want to help reignite that learning and make sure that it sticks. ’cause That’s what we’re all about. That’s why it’s called Sticky learning Lunches. ’cause We want this stuff to stick, not because it’s a gooey lunch. Happy to hear kind. Thank you very much for letting me know that the cards are starting to arrive as well.
Nathan Simmonds:
I know that a lot of you have ordered the cards and we are very thankful for that. From ourselves at Making Business matter it’s really important. We have had some challenges with getting these out to people just for current circumstances. This isn’t the normal procedure, this isn’t the normal times that we’re living in. They are arriving, they are landing on doormats. I have mine somewhere in this very office, so they are starting to arrive so massively from me.
Nathan Simmonds:
Thanks very much for the patience. While these are arriving, let’s dive into today’s session. Welcome to today’s Sticky Learning lunch with me, Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach for MBM Making Business Matter and with a leadership development and soft skills provider to the grocery and manufacturing industry. Idea about these sessions is to give you a micro learning to help you be the best version of you in the work that you do.
Nathan Simmonds:
And whether that’s at home, in the office, or even just returning to the office, it’s just about helping you to upgrade and shift the thinking with one or two ideas that’s gonna help make a a massive improvement. What are we covering today? Part two of the seven Hurdles of time management. So this is about listing what I wanted to do though. One of the points came through, I dove straight in on, on Friday with that first element, which is capturing.
Nathan Simmonds:
So what I wanted to do today was actually give you a bit of a flow diagram to show how all of these steps are working and how they interlink with each other. And then you can start to see actually what was Nathan talking about here on previous session? Where’s that gonna go to in the next session? And while I say that, that’s as a reminder for me to take action, which we’ll talk about in a minute.
Nathan Simmonds:
If you have not already registered for tomorrow session, there will be a link in the chat box below to make sure that you can do that. So the first call to action from today’s session is make sure that you are registered for the future sessions this week, all the way through the time management process that we’re talking about. And that link will be there in just a moment for you. So what we wanted to do was just give you that flow and that texture or or context that we that I want to take you through.
Nathan Simmonds:
So each step, each hurdle where you are gonna find that challenge in your time management. So the first one, which is the one we talked about on Friday, is capturing and capturing as we talked about, are those points in time where the thoughts come up and you know, is you need to be asking this question.
Nathan Simmonds:
Is one question that’s gonna help you. What and where are your capture points? Lemme say that again. What and where are your capture points? Now this could be the notepad beside the, beside your telephone or beside your, your computer keyboard. It could be the packet of post-it notes in your pocket. So as you are walking down and someone grabs you in the corridor by the water machine, they, and they say something to you or asks you, you can quickly get out that pad. That’s another capture point. It might be Alexa, it might be a voice recorder. It might be your email, your inbox. Where are all your different capture points?
Nathan Simmonds:
And as we talked about on there, it’s not about so much about the number of capture points, it’s whether or not you trust those capture points. That’s gonna be the important part. But the first part, and this is understanding, okay, what and where are they? ’cause If you don’t know where they are, chances is you’re gonna be writing things down in your, in your system or your so-called system in floating speech marks. And you’re gonna be losing them. And therefore if you are losing them, you’re gonna start losing trust in your ability, in your capability to get stuff done with the time that you’ve got. Hope this makes sense.
Nathan Simmonds:
So what and where are your capture points? The second stage in here in this part of the flow is empty. And I’ll explain this a little bit more tomorrow though. So we’re not gonna go into that today and then we’ve got deleting. So let’s give you an idea of what’s going on here. Capture point could be an email, it could be your significant other sending you a request to do something or, or or need to do something. Maybe buy the cereal or need some milk. So your capture point capturing comes in here.
Nathan Simmonds:
What you then have is you have your listing, which is what we’re gonna be talking about today. So you may want to take it out of your email and put it somewhere handy to make sure that you’ve got access to it. So that listing could be, I know it’s a documentation, it’s where are you getting stuff or making sure that you are storing stuff.
Nathan Simmonds:
So it’s in a place where you can access it at a regular basis. So we’ve gone from capturing up here, which can be in your mind, it could be electronic or it could be paper, wherever that might be. And then we’re taking it out and we’re breaking it down into some core lists. Some, you know, some clear categories that we can work from that are relevant to different, probably different elements in our life.
Nathan Simmonds:
That’s how I work with these lists. Then what happens once we’ve got it listed, we can either go across here into scheduling, which is fairly self-explanatory and we’ll talk about that a little bit later on. But it’s just making sure that we’re factoring in the right amount of time to make sure that we’re taking the right amount of actions from here. We’ve also got storing
Nathan Simmonds:
When we’re emptying certain elements out of here. So the email that’s come in, is it something we need to store? Is it something we need to be aware of? So maybe that email that came in and said, could you get the milk or could you buy this or that actually, rather than that saying could we do it? It was a case of so and so is gonna be taking that action. Need you to be aware of that. And we all know about that in a work context. So it might be you are working on a project just to let you know John is doing this and I wanted you to be aware of this in case this happens.
Nathan Simmonds:
So that thing comes in and maybe we don’t need to take action on it, but we do need to store it ’cause we need to have future reference and we need to have an understanding of it. Then if things change, then maybe it goes to listing and then maybe it goes to scheduling depending on what happens in that, in that flow of thinking.
Nathan Simmonds:
As always, nothing’s gonna work up here. So we may have gone to the, the listing, okay, which list is it on? Do I have access to that list? Okay, how do I make sure I act on it? If it’s scheduled, how do I make sure I act on it? So kind of the flow looks like this, it’s given us an idea of how we’re moving things. So we get the email, can you take action on this? Yes. Great, well I’m gonna put that on the relevant list to make sure it works. Milk home life. Okay, I’m gonna keep that separate. Where do I keep that list?
Nathan Simmonds:
Where do I store it Or if I need, you know, and then how do I make sure I act on it? And if it’s in there, well maybe as an example for the home life one, we’ve got it on the list, scheduling it on the way from home, from work, I’m gonna do A, B, and C. It’s gonna look like this. I know this is a very kind of, it’s not even simplified, it’s just this is kind of a normal action that we take on a daily basis.
Nathan Simmonds:
But what we find is inside these seven points, these seven hurdles is we find that our time management tends to drop off. Can I screenshot the whiteboard? Yes, I can, we can do even better than that. And we will send you a copy of this as a graphic, which is far neater than my handwriting. But we find that in one of these points here, or one or more, one more than one, we will find that we have a like a trip wire that causes it. So maybe we don’t have faith in one of these elements. Maybe we’re not emptying these things enough, which then causes us a problem or we’re storing it in the wrong way.
Nathan Simmonds:
Can’t see anything. Is it just me? It says waiting to view Victoria. I think that might be you. You might wanna do a refresh on your system. Just so you’re aware of that is ev can everyone else see my screen and what I’m, and and my whiteboard here can see the camera. Okay, there’s a couple of people that can’t see me jump out, maybe do a refresh on your system and then come straight back in is my recommendation. I should get a job in it, switch it off, turn it back on again, it’ll be fine. Sorry if anyone from it is here.
Nathan Simmonds:
Oops, not making friends. So we find that, you know, these seven key points, there’ll be a point where we have a trip up and we have a problem and this is why we’re doing these sessions. So we’re gonna just break into chunks and give you a couple of elements to work on. So when we get into listing, number one is getting the stuff out of your head
Nathan Simmonds:
As I as a question. I said, you know what and where are your capture points? And highlighting them. Know mentally or even writing them down. Okay, what works, what doesn’t work? Two of the most powerful questions you can ask to get no personal development. What’s working, what’s not working? Where am I forgetting things? Where am I losing stuff? Do I have faith in those points where I’m capturing stuff? As I said on Friday when we’re doing this, there are no prizes for remembering. It’s not a game. You know, we’re not gonna get some some book of reward vouchers or something for testing our memory in high pressure environments as I’ve said before.
Nathan Simmonds:
And I’ll say again that part, that logical part, your brain starts to shut down when you go into stress. And most of us are working at some sort of level of stress depending on the projects or the environments that we’re working in. So our brain isn’t gonna be functioning at the highest possible level anyway. So let’s not put it under more pressure and start breaking the faith in ourselves by trying to play a memory game with our to-do do list. Especially when we have multiple functions and multiple obligations coming in from home, from work, from every individual that we are relating to in our teams and our personal life. I hope this, you know, I hope this is clear.
Nathan Simmonds:
Number two, it is a living and breathing document. Document. What do we mean by this is working out where your lists are and getting comfortable with, you know, I try and I try a fairly reductionist approach to this and what I mean to that is I have one for my work, I have one for home and then I have my own personal to-do list. So that might be DIY projects, it might be personal work projects, it might be stuff. I’ve got these key elements. So I try not to have too many lists. Okay? And I know some people out there may have a list for their lists. There’s a few of us that exist like this. If it works for you, great. If you can trust that process, great.
Nathan Simmonds:
It’s about making sure you get it in a way that works for you so you can access it and make sure that it is living and breathing. And what you know, what needs to happen is that when you put things onto this, you can see that they’re being taken off of it. That you can see that you are taking the action that you can see things are going into your agenda and that list is working for you. Because what happens is if you fail to, you know, capture something up here and it doesn’t make it down to here and it doesn’t get to here, how do you feel now?
Nathan Simmonds:
Someone says to you and it’s open question for all of you watching and and engaging here now you miss something, your boss asks you to do something, your wife or husband asks you to do something and you thought, oh yeah, I’ll get that right? And it doesn’t happen for whatever reason because something else came in that seemed to be a higher priority or a higher stress and it doesn’t get done. And then that person 24 hours later, 48 hours later a week later says, oh, what about that thing I talked about? How do you feel when you don’t get it done?
Nathan Simmonds:
Embarrassed, incompetent. And the self-talk is vicious. Absolutely. What sort of language do we hear up here when we start to do this or when this happens to us? What sort of things are we saying to ourselves? We failed. Yes. Negative, not good enough. Anything to bring me down? Absolutely not. Again, that’s a bad one and it’s this wonderful thing we’re getting to the language of should when you’re talking about not again, oh I should have said that.
Nathan Simmonds:
Oh I should have done that. Oh I should be doing this. Well should is the language of guilt and chang and what’s happening is that that part of you, that voice of the critic that’s kicking in is using this language. What happens though is when we say should we don’t create action. So the moment we can change that language the words like should to now, what’s the valuable lesson in this? What is it I need to do in future to make sure this doesn’t happen again Or even better? What is it I need to do in future to make sure I improve upon upon this?
Nathan Simmonds:
The moment we change the should, which is a statement to a question, we can create an alternative action that will deliver a better result. I hope this makes sense. Keep myself again, I’ve done it bef absolutely this isn’t gonna help. It’s not a memory test. We get clear on where the capture point is. We get clear on the list where we’re storing this in, where we’re, where we’re holding this information while we’re simul working out where it’s gonna go
Nathan Simmonds:
So that we can access it, take action, get it done. It becomes living and breathing when we put things onto the list and then we start removing those things in a priority order, in a chronological order so that our brain can start to say this is working. This is is a behavior that benefits us personally, professionally, and we need to keep doing it. So we start to habitualize the action ’cause our brain can see it working. If it’s not a living, breathing document and you don’t know where these lists are or what list is benefiting you, you’re gonna have a problem.
Nathan Simmonds:
It won’t feel very good ’cause the voice of the critic will turn up. Your boss will turn up your wife, husband, whatever will turn up and give you a hard time and you’ll give yourself an even harder time, which doesn’t feel good, therefore you won’t do it. The primordial part of your brain will say, this isn’t a habit that we want to keep doing ’cause it doesn’t feel good. Hope this is useful. Number three, this is where we start getting a little bit. We’re gonna create some action here. I think it’s time for a new blue pen. Get a complete list of your lists.
Nathan Simmonds:
So we want to go into the analytics, we want you to start breaking down what is working for you, what isn’t working for you. We want you to do this so you can see it for yourself. So I’ve written some questions down here to fire into your all pens and papers. Ready? First, how many lists do you have? How many lists do you have? The second one here, where are you keeping your lists? Where are you keeping them? You know, do you have them all regular intervals or regular kind of grab spaces? How far away from your desk are they? And something that just pops into my head is actually, what are you keeping these lists on?
Nathan Simmonds:
I used to have a really bad habit of trying to recycle old bits of paper or an old envelopes and I would write my list of my today’s do list on that because I knew that I’d get things done and get rid of them. But the problem was that because it’s written on the back of an old envelope, someone will pick up the old envelope and think it needed recycling and throw it out and my list would fall down. So sometimes you just need to have a little bit of a framework around it. So it might be one of those to do pads, it might be the edge, a bigger one of those blotters on the edge of it. So it’s just thinking about where are you keeping your lists and how accessible are those lists.
Nathan Simmonds:
So the three questions are how many lists do you have? Where are you keeping your lists and how accessible are those lists? And from by doing this, we’re gonna start breaking down this hurdle, the listing hurdle and now, and, and get you that site. So you’ve got 20, I was gonna say 24 hours, but it’s not, you’ve got 23 and a half hours before we get into the next session to help you get that clarity of where those things are. Suggestion come in one this on Excel and on a paper printout, add notes to paper and up paper sheet.
Nathan Simmonds:
That is amazing Joan, that is amazing. So, you know, is, you know, getting the place to put your questions. Sorry. So you you are in absolutely on the right path with these. So Jane’s suggesting, you know, she’s got one list on Excel and on paper. So you’ve got an Excel version and a printed out version adds notes to the paper and updates that sheet every Friday. So it’s a a living, breathing document and it’s always with me on my desktop swing. Absolutely. This is one way to do that. So it’s about, you know, that reductionist method in kind of drilling distilling it down to make sure we’ve got clarity and more faith and trust in what we are doing.
Nathan Simmonds:
So once you’ve got those three questions is in looking at those lists and where they are and working out, okay, is it the right number of lists? Do I trust this mechanism? And depending on how many lists you’ve got in there, or a, the capture points and B, the lists, putting a ticket and cross next to those. Does it work? Does it not work? Simple? If it doesn’t work, how can you help to eliminate that and then move it into a list that is working for you. Trello, on phone, on laptop. Yes, I’m a fan of Trello. I’ve used that before for team environments.
Nathan Simmonds:
So tick and cross next to it’s super simple. Tick across. If it’s working great, you keep it. If it’s not, stop doing it now. Like me with the envelope. Okay, I thought I was doing the world a favor and saving an envelope and saving it, you know, and, and recycling fantastic. There’s other ways to recycle and there’s other ways to save the world that also helps save my sanity and they’re accessible and they’re usable. So this is the exercise for today. How many lifts you got, where are you keeping them and no is it working? Is it trustable? Hope this is useful. It is 24 minutes past according to this clock. Boom. 23. What’s been useful from today’s conversation?
Nathan Simmonds:
Tell me one thing that you’ve picked up from today that has been useful to support your time management skillset. Flowchart. Good grand. While those are coming up also we do have the time management cards as well. A coaching deck that goes through the seven hurdles that you can take yourself through as well as your team through. We’re gonna put a link for the coaching cards in the chat box as well. Two lists, hand accessible on desk. Good flowchart given a clearer understanding of the seven points. Abby, thank you very much getting organized. Absolutely good. Also, the three questions making me really think I’m, this is my job.
Nathan Simmonds:
I wanna make you in the nicest possible way I wanna make you think, I want to challenge your thinking so that you can become more incredible than yesterday. It’s all I care about making it live. Absolutely. The moment that we put things on that list and we start thinking about it is the moment we get ourselves in trouble normally with someone else, normally our significant other half ’cause we’ve forgotten and then we start to put that element of doubt into our system and the system falls down from the inside out that I need to rationalize my list and recognize my capture points ’cause I have too many good funnel it down, you know, make it, you know, what is, what was the saying?
Nathan Simmonds:
It was the Bruce Lee saying, no, I do not fear the man that’s learned 10,000 kicks. I fear the man that’s done one kick 10,000 times. And what that means is when we funnel it down, we use one point and we do it very well, then it will be a thing of beauty. Whereas if we do know lots and lots and lots, actually we spread our capabilities. So we just drill it down, distill it, boil it down to what we need and execute. Good.
Nathan Simmonds:
There’s a lot of good stuff coming up. Hope this is useful. So this is stage two, we’re talking about listing tomorrow. We’re gonna get into emptying. Before we do that though, what questions have you got for me around time management? And it might be something I answer today or it might be something I bake into the future sessions. What questions have you got for me right now?
Nathan Simmonds:
Steely silence. Either there’s no questions or the questions are so long I’m gonna be knocked down by the sheer weight of them. So as I said earlier, tips to help someone in team. Absolutely no questions, but enjoying the way things are building up. Thank you Stuart. No questions. Thank you Karen for letting know tips to help someone in team. Two ways we can do this. Victoria one, get ’em in these sessions. And you know, it is a, it is a good call out for anyone that’s in these sessions.
Nathan Simmonds:
If you know someone that would benefit from being in these training sessions, they’re free. You know, if your business would would be, would benefit or support just from a sticky learning lunch with me for 30 minutes every day and there’s gonna be no cost to your business other than them enjoying their lunch with within this conversation, get them involved.
Nathan Simmonds:
The second thing would be is as you start to see these stages, structure your coaching session to go through that. So maybe walk them through the seven points and what I’ll do is after this Sarah who fantastically supports these sessions from a more of a technical point of view, we can get the white paper shared out with everyone as well. So you can see each of these stages and share the, the, some of the elements that go with this as well. And some of these questions I’m asking, so you can use it as a live conversation to build with them. But what you can do is you can just start breaking down over the course of 10, 15 minute coaching sessions and go through each of the seven hurdles to help build them up. Hope this makes sense.
Nathan Simmonds:
Rather than kind of bombarding with, you need to do this, you need to do that and need and then going away. Okay, that’s too much and they don’t do any of it, but it’s become overwhelming actually. You just take ’em through each stage. Oh, so where are you capturing this? Where does all, where did these informa, where did these action points come in? Oh, you get it from the coffee machine. Oh, from the canteen. Oh, while you’re in the car. Oh, when, okay, great. And then getting people to highlight that. Okay then how are you bringing all that together?
Nathan Simmonds:
Get two or three key questions as you work through each of the elements of the hurdles and then just start building or getting, helping to build that person up in their own realization, their own thinking in order to create their own own improvements. Hope that helps Victoria, but please get ’em involved. Caroline Douglas sorry when you have completed your action, but I’ll wait in response. Should these be on your to-do list?
Nathan Simmonds:
That is a blooming good question. And I’m thinking the best place to take them over here is into that scheduling, into the storing space and then the scheduling space. So what you’ve got here is that maybe you’ve taken the action and you send them the email, it comes back in you. They’ve done this point, it’s now turned into a new action. So we, we’ve taken it now. Okay, I don’t have to do anything out of here. We store that. So maybe that goes into a schedule, it goes into a, a task list or whatever that sits on your outlook.
Nathan Simmonds:
And then maybe that gets scheduled for the follow-up two days, three days time. So it doesn’t sit on your list because the action got taken. So therefore you are clear. It’s, if you are the leader though, it’s still your responsibility to make sure that individual does what they need to do and what you’ve asked them. You know, the expectation you set so you can store that information and schedule a follow up to make sure that it has been actioned or done so that you can take the next action that you need to take following up from that. I hope that’s useful. Brilliant. Good questions. I’ve enjoyed this.
Nathan Simmonds:
Hope this is good. I’m hoping you’re starting to see some things, some of you’re seeing how certain things are working. Brilliant. ’cause you may find other hurdles aren’t and some of you’re finding out actually this is why it’s not working, this is why I’m hitting the hurdle rather than leaping over it. Hoping you’re starting to see this the value in this.
Nathan Simmonds:
Nice. Thank you very much Colin. We are on time, massive thank you for today. Really appreciate the engagement. I really appreciate your, appreciate your time sharing this with me and investing yourself. Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow. As I’ve said, the link for tomorrow session is in the chat box. The link for the coaching cards is in the chat box as well. So you can get the time management coaching cards there, the leadership ones, the mental health conversation ones, as well as the the coaching as well.
Nathan Simmonds:
Is there a recording of this on Friday? Yes, there is Anne-Marie absolutely is. We can also, and when you see the link there for the sticky learning lunches, if you go to that page at the top are the, you know, the days and the future and, and future sessions underneath is all of the previous ones that we’ve been doing for the last five, six weeks, maybe even seven weeks now.
Nathan Simmonds:
So it’s all recorded in there. So you can access them, share them with other people, send people the links. Absolutely. so they’re there. So you’ve got tomorrow’s session, get registered, see you tomorrow, you’ve got the cards there. If you haven’t got a packet or you want to get some packs of those cards for different areas or aspects of your business, do so they’re there for you, a avail. And they’re only five pound a pack, which is huge value for what you get out of them. And then the other part is the virtual classrooms.
Nathan Simmonds:
Now, if you know there’s people in your teams or there’s people in your business or your whole business as, as in its entirety would benefit from experience either myself or or one of the rest of us at MBM delivering some content that’s gonna help you take your skills up in a very much more you know, intense way because it’s gonna be focused and nuanced to the people in your business and to the personalities. Then the link there is for the virtual classrooms.
Nathan Simmonds:
If you would like to make a difference in your business, if you would like to help take those skill sets up, click that link and let’s have a conversation to make that happen. Cards ordered, fantastic category management. Oh, wonderful. Appreciated everybody. Thank you for being here again, it is greatly appreciated from me. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow and please have a phenomenal rest of your day. Look forward to seeing you then.
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