Time management - Personality drivers
Personality drivers
General
These are usually ingrained into us from childhood. They come from experiences around us and the influence of our parents.
Faster
Time is always of the essence. There is never enough. You rush things at the start and finish them quickly often resulting in poor quality work.
You never have time to relax and enjoy yourself. ‘What ‘s next’ is often on the tip of your tongue.
Impatience will be an enemy hating interruptions and anyone who slows you down. This impatience can come across to your team. You get a lot done but at the expense of a relaxing quality of life.
To counteract this you must try to slow down. Deliberately take time out to spend with your family. Take up a hobby that encourages relaxation, for example, fishing or painting. When doing these cut yourself off from distractions by turning off the phone or leave it in answer phone mode.
Please
You like to help others often at the expense of yourself and family. You find it hard not to be liked and are always willing to do another a favour.
After a while some people will take advantage of this and load work in your direction. If you have a series of tasks you find yourself doing the tasks from others first in order to please. You are well liked. You can not manage this driver by doing more and more tasks as there will always be another task to do from someone else.
You must recognise that you are likeable and don’t need to do this to get friends. Tell yourself that others can look after their own tasks. Your own tasks are much more important. You have your own goals that you must fulfil. If you don’t then your time for quality activities will be diminished drastically.
You must also learn the Time Management skill of saying, ‘No’.
Perfection
It is good to do things as well as possible but not necessarily perfectly.
The search for perfection can lead to worrying about miniscule detail that is not warranted in the time available.
You will often hold up work while awaiting additional detail or clarification. You don’t like people to rush you.
The overall effect can be a reluctance to delegate as no one will be able to do the job as well as you.
Perfection is a good trait if not taken to excess. If you can recognise this in yourself make a conscious decision to ignore some of the detail.
Delegate even when you suspect the finished result may not be perfect. It may not quite have the negative impact that you fear. It’s this fear of failure that you must overcome. We all fail.
Provided failure does not lead to a safety risk then it should be OK to delegate and not worry about it so much.
Naturally, you will have control measures in place anyway.
Try hard
No matter how hard you try, you never seem to achieve the standard you want. You feel guilty and want to try even harder. You tend to look at the past with negative regret that you could have done better and worry about future actions. It is almost as though you expect to fail no matter how hard you try to succeed.
You need to believe that you will succeed. Keep telling yourself this and it will happen. Past experience is not there to make you worry about the future but a lesson to help you succeed. You have the power to change this driver as it was kindly donated to you by your parents. You must persist in feeling positive and not let any setbacks stop your future successes.
Be strong
The idea of never showing weakness stops you from expressing yourself as you might. The classic example would be the parent or spouse who can not tell their children or spouse that they love them. You may need drink to enjoy yourself and let yourself relax. Praise becomes hard for you to give. Hobbies may be sports that have a physical outlet.
Try to open up and give praise. Make a point of finding something to praise from your team on a regular basis.