Making Time for Client Development: Manage Your Time and Energy
Tuesday, I asked if you had answered "why" client development is important to you. It is the first step to make time for client development. In this post, I will share with you three noted experts' approach to time management.
Noted author Carl Sandburg once said: “Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how well it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.” He wrote that long before the Internet, email and other current potential distractions.
In a couple of weeks I will be doing a program called “Time Management: Making Time for Client Development.” I plan to include a discussion on time and energy management and share ideas I learned from books by Stephen Covey, David Allen and Jim Loehr. Each author approaches the subject in a slightly different way. I have read their books and listened to their presentations. I have found each approach valuable. Recently I found a report on the effectiveness of coaching programs using each approach. I plan my week around my roles as Stephen Covey suggests. I use David Allen's approach to next actions. i set physical/economic, mental/learning, emotional/relationship, and spiritual/values goals based on Jim Loehr's four sources of energy. Take a look and decide which approach will work best for you.
One final thought: One way to make time for client development is to eliminate wasted time. How much time do you waste each day on things that really do not matter? You might be opening and responding to unimportant emails, doing things that could be delegated, searching for things in your office. If you saved just 30 minutes a day, that would be 182½ hours for a year. Suppose you used that time for client development or your own development, what do you think would happen to your career?
