How to Become More Mindful and Intentional about Your Time
By Sarah Clark
Everyone I speak to, whether with my work or social hat on, is busy! And not just “busy enough to occupy yourself pleasantly” busy but too busy – borderline overwhelmed.
So, how do we change that? How do we get the balance right – do more high value, enjoyable work and less work that saps our energy and eats up our time? In short, how do we work and live more joyfully?
Recently, we joined forces with our friends at Crafty Counsel and were lucky enough to run a workshop at their summer event – Crafty Fest – tackling just this subject. The aim of the workshop was to give attendees a framework for decision-making around what to do and crucially, what not to do. We encouraged participants to think broadly and holistically about how they spend their days and lives, rather than focussing on their lives through a ‘productivity at work’ lens. The feedback we got was very positive.
The festival goers at Crafty Fest are all in-house legal, but I know it’s not just lawyers who could benefit from undertaking this exercise. So, get yourself a pen and paper and learn for yourself how to become more mindful and intentional about your time.
The energy vs value prioritisation quadrant
Divide a piece of paper like this on the left.
Then, thinking about what you do on typical day, write a list of the activities that you regularly do.
Once you have done that, spend some time analysing those activities and mapping them in the relevant quadrant.
Which of those jobs are high value, which give you energy? And conversely, what do you do on a typical day that saps your energy or is of little value?
Assessing tasks in energy terms
Thinking about tasks in terms of energy is the key to learning how to prioritise what is important and enjoyable. We are all different, but everyone has a finite battery. Some tasks will energise us, whilst others will drain our energy. Understanding what effect tasks have on your energy levels is going to be very valuable information for you.
Obviously, some tasks are unavoidable. For example, some people find analysing data/ financial statements really gruelling (I know I do!), but if you are an in-house lawyer, responsible for a budget, or are a Senior Executive, there is no avoiding this stuff. In this case, it would be high value (because I absolutely need to do it to understand what is going on in my department, or business), but it would sap my energy, so I would scribble it in the top left quadrant.
Being mindful of the impact on your energy of different tasks will enable you to deploy strategies to offset any drain. When you’ve also identified what you need to prioritise for your mental health so the wheels don’t fall off, you can boost your battery before or after energy-draining tasks. So, before I review the budget, I take the dog for a quick walk in the fresh air, topping up my battery to ‘full bars’ before depleting it with figures!
Assessing tasks in value terms
Everyone has a different definition of value. What is valuable in your life will depend on many factors including your own specific goals and ideals and what you do for work. Think about what contributes to you hitting your goals and achieving objectives – both personally and at work. Whatever definition of value is meaningful for you, the key is to be mindful. Even if writing that board paper for work is a high value task for you at work, it is unlikely to be the best use of your time at 7pm if your bigger personal goal is to be more present with your family and they are all downstairs making pizzas…
What are the barriers to living mindfully?
Think also about what you do in life that hampers these goals and objectives. There must be a reason why we aren’t all ‘curating’ our days, according to the quadrant and mindfully setting our boundaries and sticking to them. What is holding us back from doing this? Personally, I often claim I don’t have the time and then spend time doing jobs I don’t need to do with the excuse that explaining it to someone else will take too long! I also often fall into the trap of eating lunch at my desk, ploughing through emails, when I would have been better served by taking time away from the screen and doing something to boost my energy, to enable a more productive afternoon.
I know from feedback from our workshop that many of us feel a lot of pressure to be productive and feel guilty for spending time away from our desks. Though, everyone acknowledged that taking breaks for a dog walk or other energy-boosting activity often helps performance at work.
So, if we want to avoid burnout or breakdown, what can we do?
Create a ‘Not To Do List’
When you’ve identified some of the barriers that are stopping you living mindfully, it can be very helpful to have a physical record of them. It helps to set intentions and to hold yourself accountable. Mine is stuck on the wall, next to my monitor, so that I can’t hide from it!
To help get you started, I’m sharing my ’Not to do’ list. Here goes:
- Accept invitations to, or attend meetings when I don‘t have a clear idea of the agenda and what part I am expected to play
- Spend more than five minutes a day on my to-do list
- Ignore ’time blocks’ I have scheduled in my diary to get important things done and jump on a request from someone who ‘shouts loudest‘
- Multitask (there is no such thing)
- Look at notifications on my phone when I am doing focused work (voicemail is fine)
- Check my emails more than once per hour.
- Offer up deadlines before they are suggested.
- Accept unreasonable deadlines.
- Eat lunch at my desk every day.
- Keep things I would be better off delegating to someone else.
- Use email to communicate something that requires a phone call or meeting.
- Rewrite people’s work product no matter how bad it is unless it is absolutely critical.
So, as you can see, my list is fairly lengthy and I’m very much a work in progress. But, committing to being mindful about what I do in my day against the energy/value criteria and committing to stop doing things that are unhelpful and unhealthy for me is helping me to live more joyfully and more mindfully. I hope it has the same effect for you.
Don’t miss our follow up workshop
If this has piqued your interest, why not sign up for our follow-up session on 17th July, 1pm-2pm. Our online workshop on “How to Say No” will give you some practical skills on how to safeguard your boundaries and politely and appropriately message them to others…
