WATCH: Brain Friendly Time Management: Helping your Brain to Take Control (Ep2)
This is the next episode in the series about “Brain Friendly Time Management”. ‘Five Principles to Improve your Productivity’ and this episode is all about the first principle which is about ‘Taking Control’.
Take Control
Because our brain needs to know that you have some sense of control in your life. Without a sense of control, uncertainty builds up, you get a real lot of stress in your brain then you get an ‘amygdala hijack’ and before you know it you’re starting to lose control.
Clarify Outcomes
So, you need to ‘Clarify your Outcomes’. What is it that you’re really trying to achieve. Begin with the end in mind. And that creates ‘Dopamine’. Dopamine is created when we have an anticipation of a reward and it’s really useful. Makes us feel good, gives us motivation, anticipation of something good happening, helps us make better creative connections in our brains and have a wider field of vision to understand a greater number of things.
Collate Tasks
And it’s really useful to ‘Collate all the Tasks’. This avoids an ‘amygdala hijack’. It means that we don’t get stressed about wondering whether we’ve missed out on something. So that you can ‘manage the threats’ that arise, you can put things into perspective by having a ‘list of everything’ that needs to be done. Phone calls, emails, all the tasks that need to be done, major projects. Get them out of your head onto paper or onto an app so that you can manage them more effectively. This reduces stress and creates more calm so that you can be more effective.
Develop Boundaries
Another useful thing to take control is to ‘Develop Boundaries’. Be really clear with other people about what your boundaries are so that you ‘protect your time’ and ‘learn to say No’. And there’s a way to do that and if you’re interested in learning how to say ‘no’ send us an email or get in touch and we’ll send you a list of top tips on how to say ‘no’. So, it’s really important to ‘protect your time’ and then finally look at ‘Productivity Apps’.
Productivity Tools
There are loads them around these days – Monday.com, Trello, different people have different favourites. I particularly like ‘Checklists’ because they can really help you to have a list of all the key things that need to be done in a particular task and they’re fantastic for delegation so no little things get mixed out. You avoid silly mistakes.
So, when it comes to ‘Time Management’, the first thing to do is to Take Control and remember…
Stay Curious!
With best regards,
David Klaasen
Talent4Performance help business leaders clarify complexity. We inspire people and drive continuous performance improvement, so they can convert thinking into action and results.
©David Klaasen – 2022
