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If you have ever played Angry Birds, then you know what it’s like to throw yourself into the deep end, without the benefit of any instruction or practice, and attempt to accomplish a tough objective. You also might know that in the right context, and even without any visible benefit, just the act of trying to get better at an admittedly stupid game can become quite addictive.

The game has had 450 million downloads.

Make no mistake about it… this is learning at it’s very best.

It got me thinking about the future of time management training. In the idea future, when a client comes to us for help, once the contract has been signed, what would the idea training environment look like?

First of all, they’d be playing games. Real-time, addictive, 3-D games that would immerse them in a made-up world in which the consequences of their actions would be felt in a matter of seconds. They’d be able to make and re-make choices just to see what happens, experiment with different approaches and make incremental upgrades to their current system. It would massively accelerate their learning, and allow them to examine what it would take to change habits, patterns and rituals without experiencing their failures directly.

Imagine how a flight simulator works for pilots… it would be the same thing for our clients.

Over at 2Time Labs we are taking on the challenge of coming up with that kind of training and making it available here on the MyTimeDesign blog.

Stay tuned…!

In a recent look around a well known time management guru’s discussion forums I saw a question that comes up frequently: “Can I use your stuff in my coaching business?”

The question is usually posed by someone who read the guru’s book or took his/her program, and sees how they could use it as an offering for their own clients.

The answer is usually the same: “Yes, if all you are doing is sharing information, as long as you keep our name on the stuff you use and don’t change anything. No, if you want to make any money.”

It’s a familiar song to anyone who is on the receiving end. Some do go ahead and use the stuff anyway, and hope that no-one finds out. They usually do it on a small scale, and never do more than dabble here or there. They definitely don’t accept a call from a Fortune 500 company to lead a seminar series to 5,000 people. Well, maybe some do, but most don’t: their conscience can only be stretched so far before it snaps them back like a rubber band.

Most just give up, and walk away.

For a few years, I have been looking for a decent source of training in this area without luck, making me think that most coaches are stuck delivering what I call “Time Management 0.0.”: disjointed tips, shortcuts, tricks, etc. This approach is not a rigorous one, and hardly stands up to the quality of other consulting offerings that include standardized processes, and refined techniques.

Here at 2Time Labs we have been engaged in publishing our ideas for 6+ years, and never quite intended to provide a solution for time management professions. Yet, the question we are asking ourselves is how much information and instruction should be provide to fellow coaches, and under what circumstances.

We understand fully that ideas are not copyrightable, and in our minds 2Time Labs is merely a conduit. However, when those ideas turn into language, forms, processes and training of different kinds… well, that’s another story. At some point, there will be a charge, but the question is… what’s that point?

I don’t have an answer to that question yet, and the fact is, we are better at figuring out great ideas related to time management and sharing them with the world than taking care of the commercial side of things. What we do know we have lots of stuff that can be converted into solid tools for time management coaches and that this kind of specific information is unfortunately very rare.

So stay tuned… we’ll continue to answer these questions in the next year or so.

A smart client may tell you in the very first session that there is no such thing as time management or time clutter.

They happen to be correct – don’t argue with them.

Time cannot be managed, and it also cannot become cluttered. It simply moves of its own accord from one moment to the next, and there is nothing that we can do to manage or de-clutter it.

Instead, you should know that what you ARE really doing is “time demand management,” or in other words, “time demand clutter consulting.” The objects that become cluttered, and therefore need to be managed, are time demands. (We don’t use the longer phrases because they are a bit confusing to clients, but our minds do need to be clear.)

At the same time, clients become confused by the amount that comes at them each day. They try different techniques to limit the flow, such as not using email. The problem, however, isn’t email, which is simply an efficient method of sending and receiving asynchronous messages.

The problem is that the number of time demands has increased. If you took away your email system and replaced it with paper, you’d have a similar complaint about getting too many paper memos. The problem must be solved at the right level, if it’s to remain truly and permanently solved.

The single most important distinction that you, a time clutter consultant must know like the proverbial bank of your hand is that of a time demand.

Your clients approach you for help from all kinds of angles, that seem to be confusing and have little in common:

“I get too much email.”
“I don’t have enough time to get everything done.”
“I am so stressed out – things are falling through the cracks.”
“I am suffering from informational overload”

What they don’t know, and must be taught, is that all of the above symptoms are related to the way they create, and manage time demands.

A time demand is an individual commitment to complete an action in the future. In some ways, they are like physical objects but in others, they are quite different.

Time demands:
– are always created by the individual (without exception).
– consist of a task, plus a perceived duration, and oftentimes an estimated start and end time / date.
– accumulate.
– are born in the mind, and may be stored there also (but not safely.)
– vary in length.
– disappear when the action is completed.
– can be transformed from mental objects to other representations such as items on a todo list, appointments, or reminders. When this happens, the mind may retain no trace of its creation.
– can be “moved” from one location to another in an individual’s time management system.

A good consultant is always working to improve a client’s methods for dealing with time demands. As the number of time demands grows, so should one’s capacity.

With these principles in mind, it’s much easier to consult with someone at any level of skill, as there’s only one thing you need to focus on when doing a Co-Diagnostic activity: “where are the time demands going?”

Here at 2Time Labs/ MyTimeDesign, we came up with a new way to distinguish the skills that a client moves through as they gain additional skills in time management.  To understand how this works, you can think of it in two ways:

1. As a client makes progress, they expand their ability to deal with greater volumes of time demands.  They use more refined skills, and experience fewer breakdowns of a basic nature.  They seem to accomplish a great deal in the eyes of others.  Here at 2Time Labs, we use a ladder borrowed from the Martial Arts belts, just because it’s a hierarchy that’s easy to understand.  A client might progress from White, to Yellow, to Orange and then to Green belt levels, for example.

2. To move from one level to another, we impose a high standard:  you must achieve a certain level of proficiency in 11 distinct disciplines.  We have done our best to establish observable and measurable activities that a novice can use to evaluate their current status and their progress over time.  Reaching a new belt becomes quite a much simpler endeavor when what’s needed to improve is clearly laid out in front of you.

Your job, then, as a time clutter coach/consultant is to move your client from one level to the next – assuming that they are in agreement!  Regardless of the method you use for measurement, I believe that there are certain broad behaviors that client must learn in order to move up any time management skill ladder.  Here’s what they are:

The Memory Phase

The client uses a great deal of personal memory to manage their time, and their tasks.  They are using a skill they honed in the education system in a habitual and automatic way, and routinely over-estimate their powers of recall.  Unless they live a very simple life, mishaps often occur.  At some point, life becomes too complex, the demands upon them become too numerous, or they just get too old to use this technique well.

A few decide to change their methods and move to the next level:

The List Phase

At this point in their development, the client has learned the habit of keeping lists, and knows that their memory is unreliable, even if they still use it from time to time.  They use lists of varying length and number.

All goes well until the number of time demands once again increases to the point where their methods are overwhelmed. They find that they must spend a great deal of time scanning their lists, and they must do so frequently in order to make sure that their mental calendar of events is appropriately updated.  (They typically only maintain an appointment book that indicates when they have meetings with other people.)

These reviews become increasingly tiresome and even unbearable, and the pressure of having to work with a mental calendar with so many items on it leads to lateness, missed deadlines, time crunches and other problems having to do with poor planning.

A few decide to upgrade their system, and move to the next level:

The Calendar Phase

The client now must incorporate electronic technology, which was optional in prior phases.  They use their calendar as a control center for all their major activities and only use lists to support activities that are scheduled e.g. a shopping list, or meeting agenda.  They juggle and change their calendar many times a day, which isn’t difficult given that it’s portable and electronic (e.g. on a tablet which offers the best tools today.)  They learn how to schedule activities with enough time between them to allow for the unexpected, and they start each week with an ideal calendar that they then modify accordingly.

They also have mastered their Capture Points (i.e. Inboxes of all kinds) and never allow them to decay into permanent places of storage.  Instead, they systematically empty these Capture Points so that the items in them never become stale before being removed.

A few decide to upgrade their systems, and are determined that there must be another level…  however, here at 2Time Labs we believe it hasn’t been defined.  Yet.

While the above phases are good for you to know as a coach/consultant, they aren’t very useful for clients to work with directly.  They are simply at too high a level to be operational.  At 2Time Labs, we have broken them down into baby steps, and you’ll have to do the same if you decide not to use our system.

That is, you must start with the big phases that clients must traverse, and cut them down into micro-steps that are easy to accomplish.  The big benefit is that once you share the steps with clients, they can see a pathway to success, and stay motivated for the duration of a long journey of continuous improvement.

P.S.  Here’s a background video on the reasons why one time management system doesn’t fit everyone, a fact that’s known by many professional organizers.

Check out this infographic to see why your clients are likely to prefer the Time Management 2.0 approach.

Time Management 1.0 vs. 2.0

Any training program that instantly dumps too many new habits into the laps of learners is bound to fail. Most time management programs do just that, and so do time clutter consultants who can rattle off the 50 things that the client needs to fix in the first 60 minutes.

The better approach is to spend time to teach your client a thing or two about structured habit change, and the latest findings which all show how weak we are at this particular skill.

A variety of books have been written on the topic, but my favorite is Change Anything by Patterson, Grenny, Maxfield, McMillan and Switzler.

They make the point that we over-estimate our willpower to our detriment and falsely believe that habit change is easy. We then fail and blame the coach/consultant/trainer, and some even swear off time management training altogether.

The way to ensure that your client doesn’t join the unsuccessful majority is to make it impossible to fail.

1 – take all the changes they discovered that they want to make from the prior Phases and make a single list, along with the dates they had originally assigned.

2 – help them to rationalize their list into one that looks doable, from their perspective. It’s better to be pessimistic than optimistic at this point as there’s more to be gained from making faster progress than expected, than from failing to meet their goals.

At the end of this exercise, their plan might stretch for more than a year. Don’t be alarmed, as this might fit the progress that they need to make to meet their goals.

Some might not be able or willing to see more than a few changes. Don’t force them to make the progress that you think they should make, but instead urge them to be successful in making the changes they are committed to.

If you are using a ladder or matrix of fundamentals such as the ones we use at 2Time Labs, then you might want to ensure that the client’s growth is uniform, and that you don’t end up with a profile of ridiculously high skills in one area and low skills in others. Instead, try to even out the changes they need to make to prevent imbalances that could cause unwanted problems.

Never make the mistake of putting their plan together for them. Remember, it’s called Co-Planning for a reason!

Lastly, be prepared for your client to want to change their plans as their self-knowledge increases. Again, don’t force them into anything. Just keep pointing out the consequences of every decision they make, and always leave the final decision up to them.

A good plan should not leave them drained, but inspired.

Three months after your work is done with a client, what differences would you like to see?

As a time clutter consultant, it’s useful to think about the end-result. In other words, what do you want to happen once your work with your client is complete, your bill has been paid and you have sailed off into the golden sunset?

Most who are new to this field want results that are nothing short of magical. They wish for a client who will implement everything they are told without delay, and arrive at a perfect system within a matter of months, if not weeks, or days.

They are likely to be disapponted by what they find in reality.

Because time management systems are made up of habits, practices and rituals, our clients like most humans beings, have a tough time in making changes stick. It takes time. As Mark Twain said: “Habits must be coaxed down the stairs one step at time.”

Once your consulting gig is over, therefore, you probably won’t leave a client in a static state that is unchanging. Insted, here’s the very best place in which you can leave your clients:

1. They have a plan for gradually changing habits, practices and rituals that lasts at least 6-12 months.
2. They are implementing new routines that are are supported by their environment.
3. They stand ready, willing and able to implement an upgrade in the future as soon as the circumstances require it.
4. They are constantly tweaking their habit-change support system so that they maintain forward momentum.
5. They welcome new technology, and the opportunity to see if it can help them put in an upgrade.

At this point they are fully self-sufficient and you, the consultant, can walk away knowing that you have given them all they need to be successful.

What do you think? Is it too much to ask for?

P.S. If you have an interest in using the three month difference to increase your revenue, here are some further thoughts on how to be an effective time management consultant in order to achieve that goal.

Some consultants worry that there might be clients who are either not sophisticated enough, or too sophisticated for them to handle.

It’s a valid concern, as static time management systems that present fixed habit patterns often miss the mark with clients who fall at the low end, or high end of the skill spectrum. As their Time Management 2.0 consultant, you need not worry, however.

First, if you are consulting with them it’s because they experience a current gap, or expect to face one in the short term. That gap is the cause of symptoms they hope to mitigate.

Second, at the end of your work with them, they actually need the same things: a handful of behavior changes that they can safely and successfully implement because they have the right supports in place. The exact number of changes, and the choice of supports must be discovered by working with them.

Third, when working with someone with low skills, the key is not to overwhelm them with too much. Make success easy by focusing on small steps.

Fourth, when working with someone with high skills, don’t box them into anything. If your diagnosis shows them to have super-human skill in time management, don’t panic. Just use the principles that you know and understand that you must look for the Kryptonite… their areas of weakness. Then, don’t pretend to have the answers. Instead, bring the right questions and discover what small changes they need to focus on making in the short and mid-term.

Just to reinforce the point… remember, you are the expert now because of what you know, but because of what you know what questions to ask which leave both clients at the very same place: with a plan for improvement that looks doable to each of them.

Here at 2Time Labs we have come up with 2 innovations that we offer to time clutter consultants.

One is the 8 Phase method that describes the distinct steps taken to deliver time clutter consulting. It’s described in this blog in some detail given our commitment to serve the needs of time clutter coaches this year.

Our other innovation is a specific framework built using Time Management 2.0 principles. It describes the flow of time demands through one’s life. In our individual time management training, it provides each person with the 7 inescapable fundamentals of time management, showing all the possible ways in which a time demand can be disposed of once it enters a person’s life. These are comprised of Capturing, Emptying, Tossing, Acting Now, Storing, Scheduling and Listing. There are also 4 Advanced Fundamentals: Interrupting, Switching, Warning and Reviewing

We are sometimes asked the question: “can someone be an effective time management consultant without using this second innovation, because I have my own approach?” The short answer? Absolutely.

It’s entirely possible to learn and enhance what you do from the way we deliver our training, simply using the same principles, and come up with your own set of practices, forms and measurements. While we reserve our detailed forms for paying customers who are committed to learning how to upgrade their time management skills, there’s a lot that we can pass on on how to help your clients use your approach as effectively as possible.

Here’s what you need to take into account:

1. The vast majority of professionals made up their own time management system as teens or young adults. Some parts work, and some parts don’t. Each person’s system is different, so you need a way to diagnose them individually.

2. The process of diagnosis needs to be simple enough for them to learn how to do it once, and again when their lives change.

3. Most people fail to implement lots of new habits and practices all at once. Your approach must help them take small steps.

4. You must focus on behaviors that are observable, rather than attitudes, value, energy, moods et al which are not.

5. Build a competency matrix based on the behaviours you have identifed. Here are a couple of examples that show a ladder of skills in different, distinct areas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6. Use the ladder of skills in your discussion with clients as a rating tool, and a way to focus on the gaps in behavior that are needed to move to the next level.

This is the way that we use to break down a complex skill (time management) into component parts that helps the client to focus on one or two habits at any moment in time, and therefore avoid the problem that most trainees have of trying to implement too much all at once. Using your own ladder of behaviors, it’s not too hard to achieve this goal.