Leadership Tip of the Week

Make time for all your commitments!

Be passionate about achieving all your life goals.

Even if your professional priorities are demanding, go out of your way to make time for personal commitments like exercising and spending time with your spouse and kids.

Be clear about your personal and professional long-term and short-term commitments and objectives. The more you occupy your consciousness with, and focus your intention on your dreams, commitments and goals the less space there will be for noises and excuses.

Schedule clear activities associated with fulfilling your commitments and goals in your calendar. Bring your commitments and goals to life by turning them to clear actions and practices that populate your calendar.

Keep to your schedule, no matter what. Relate to all commitments as equal. Don’t cancel your exercise or time with your kids because of workload or because you are afraid these will interfere with or jeopardize your success at work. They won’t!

Say ‘no’ to others who want to double book things with you in timeslots that are already allocated to other personal or professional commitments. Be courteous and responsible about it and offer alternative times for conflicting activities. However, don’t sell out on personal commitments and priorities because of professional ones.

Don’t buy into all the ‘good reasons’ why you don’t have the time to do what is important to you. If you buy into these and put off your commitments you will feel frustrated and dissatisfied. Remember, there is no actual correlation between your internal noise and commentary about what you can or can’t do, and how much you actually can and will get done.

When needed, be flexible and innovative, including perhaps rescheduling things or working longer hours to get everything done.

If you take a stand for having it all, and you manage your schedule with the relentless commitment to never sacrifice or sell out on anything important, you will find that the noise will have less and less influence over your actions and your ability to have a well-balanced professional and personal life will grow significantly.