.....           By now many of you will be back at work and the time you had off over Christmas/New Year will seem like a distant memory.  To help you stay focused on the year ahead I want to share the following with you.

    John is a personal coaching client and has been getting coached for several months. Since he's started coaching he's been resisting filling in a time sheet so we can both see where he is spending his time.  I find he's not the only one.  It seems that many clients try to avoid doing this very simple activity... call it laziness, procrastination, being allergic to writing things down, being scared of what they might find out or being undisciplined.  The benefit of doing this for a period of 1 - 2 weeks helps identify where you spend your time either productively or unproductively.

    Anyhow John did get started and recorded what he was doing each hour of every day for 3 days.  Although that timeframe wasn't long enough, he realised just by reviewing that time, that he wasn't getting much done.  We both knew that however the timesheet not only confirmed it but also pinpointed the timewasters.  He could see how he was allowing himself to get interrupted and distracted unnecessarily.  He had a major realisation that his sleeping patterns were stealing 2 hours of his productive time each day.. John was going to bed too late at night, sleeping in for too long in the morning so by the time he got to work he had wasted half the morning!  That meant he was wasting 10 hours of his working week which was costing him financially $400 a day or $2000 a week as he charged $200 an hour for his time.

    He had resisted doing this simple activity for weeks and by doing so, the problem persisted.  What was also interesting, John had never mentioned that he was constantly tired, although he felt it he never verbalised it. 

    He could see how he was allowing himself to get interrupted and distracted unnecessarily. He had a major realisation that his sleeping patterns were stealing 2 hours of his productive time each day.. John was going to bed too late at night, sleeping in for too long in the morning so by the time he got to work he had wasted half the morning! That meant he was wasting 10 hours of his working week which was costing him financially $400 a day or $2000 a week as he charged $200 an hour for his time.

The Final Word

    So what are you resisting that keeps persisting?  Do you think it's worth disciplining yourself to fill in a time sheet for 2 weeks and then analysing the results?  Maybe you too are wasting 2 hours a day and hundreds or even thousands of dollars in income each week .