Defend Your Turf - 7 Ways To Set The Agenda That Will Put You In Control

"Man is born to seek power, yet his actual condition makes him
a slave to the power of others."
-Hans J. Morgenthau

The best offense is a good defense.

The best way to get organized and in control of your time is to not let the other guy get the jump on you. Time Management is all about control and setting the agenda. Let's look at ways to defend your turf, get better control of your time and be the one that sets the agenda.

Your Attitude Will Set The Playing Field

How you look at Time Management and your attitude about how you gain control of your time will go a long way in establishing how successful you will be. You will see that we use a lot of words like defend, control, playing field, organizing, attack, the enemy, turf, words that you normally associate with sports or even warfare. That is no accident. I like to use these words because it gets me into the proper frame of mind. I also use these words because many of people start to look at Time Management and gaining control of their time and ultimately their lives from a more aggressive pro-active position. Taking this position will only enhance your chances of success.

I hope that as time goes, but not too much time, as we progress through our material, you start to look at your time with more of a proprietary feeling and attitude. When you start to take ownership of your time and start to look at it in the light of it being the non renewable ever decreasing commodity that it is, you will take on that pro-active position that will enable you to have the attitude required to take back control of your time.

Take back control of my time? Who has control of it now?
Probably everyone but you. Ask yourself these simple questions.

1. Do you have a written agenda for your next workday?

2. Do you have specific times you check your email, real mail, memos, and written communications?

3. Do you have certain times in the day when your office door, entrance to your work area, is closed?

4. Do you group all your appointments in a specific time slot?

5. Do you group your interruptions into a time that best suits you?

6. Do you have a Power Hour each day?

7. Do you have a specific time to make and receive or return phone calls?

Did you answer yes to all 7 questions? If not, you have lost control of your time to the people around you; your co-workers, anyone who emails you, contacts you, calls you. Basically anyone and everyone around you.

Your time is now not your own. Other people take your time and use it to best move their agenda forward, without any thought to the negative consequences that will affect you. Does that sound like a good thing for you? Letting other people use your time for their benefit is NOT good for you, never has been, never will be. These other people are not bad people; they don't sit up at night and plot to steal your time. The fact is, it hurts you and it eliminates any chance that you will have to get what you want done, when you want to do it. Ultimately, it will rob you of your effectiveness.

As part of the personal changes we have been talking about, a change in how you view your time is one that will have to happen. Taking on a proprietary attitude and looking at your time as something that you have to protect is a trait that you will find useful if not absolutely necessary.

Nice Guys Finish Without The Use Of Their Own Time

We have all heard the saying, " nice guys finish last ". We can change that slightly and say, " nice guys finish without the use of their own time ". First of all, I'm not one of those people who think this saying is negative or casts a poor light on those who believe in it. On the other side of the coin, you can be nice and also have the fortitude to protect what is yours, in this case, your time. This is another one of those hot points in seminars when I'm debating with people about the validity of losing control of ones time and how aggressive you have to be to reclaim your time. Aggressive does not mean you have to be rude, mean spirited, and nasty or exhibit any other anti-social behavior. It does means you do have to approach protecting your time with zeal, with passion and with an attitude that expresses the importance of taking back your time and using it to the benefit of the person it belongs too, you.

In more cases than not, just sitting down and saying, "I never looked at what I did and how I interacted with every one else in this context before" is helpful. When you start to look at the negative impact in allowing other people to control and drive the agenda, you see how other parts of the Power Time System are meant to give you back control of your time and will allow you to set the agenda and be the one who starts to dictate how other people will interact with you.

Fill The Void- First

Each day is like a vacuum, a void to be filled. The person who fills that void first has a massive advantage over everyone else. That person knows what they want to do, when they want to do it and most importantly, will already have the other people around them responding to them first.

When you have planned out your day, effectively filling the void with the activities you want to do, you are making the other people and other activities deal with you on your terms. For example, you know the day before, that the phone will ring a certain amount of the time. You can allow it to interrupt you all day or you can set aside certain times to either take calls, return calls or make calls. One way you are in control, the other way you are allowing EVERYONE else to be in control. You fill that void by setting aside specific times to deal with the phone and then move on.

Filling the void means making a pre-emptive strike, in advance. Being the first very often is enough to carry the day. Remember, you are dealing with people and events that very rarely are organized or have a pre-planned agenda, they just happen! If you on the other hand are prepared, organized and have a game plan, the majority of the time, you will be the winner.

Take The Lead

You can never go wrong with taking the lead. The majority of people around you are not going to have a plan. You do. It takes very little effort to simply work your plan and, in doing so, people around you through a lack of direction on their part, will follow. Example, between 10:00 and 11:00, you have planned to put in your Power Hour. You proceed to work on your pre planned Prioritized Activities, those that wanted to see you then, unannounced, will now have to deal with you after because you are tied up, doing what you pre-planned. You took the lead, were already working on something, they now have to find a time when you can see them.

Once you have taken the lead, continue to press your advantage. Take our example, when they can't see you unannounced, you then direct them to a time of your choosing when they can see you. Once again, you will be leading them, and they will be following your lead. Why wouldn't they? They want to see you, don't seem to have an agenda of their own and most people are happy to allow someone else do the thinking for them.

Defend Your Turf- Defend Your Time

Defending your time is all about being prepared and driving the agenda. Both lead you to taking control of what happens around you and being the person everyone else responds to. Lets look at being prepared first

Being Prepared

The terms we use, Prioritizing, Time Activating, Day Planner, A-B-C Priorities, means you will always be prepared for the vast majority of events and circumstances that will happen to you in any given day. As we have discussed before, 80 to 90 % of what happens to us at work are regular occurrences, ones that happen every day. It is these events that we can plan for, be ready for, and put ourselves in the most advantageous position. You can be sure that the systems, tools and all of the other facets of the Power Time System (PTS) will ensure that, if followed properly, you are suitably prepared on a daily basis to protect your turf as well as your time.

Driving The Agenda

Driving the agenda is an aspect of the Power Time System that I particularly like because it has such far-reaching positive benefits to whoever uses it, with so little time invested. Driving the agenda means you are the person who gets the high ground and everyone else has to climb up to see you. The advantage to you is that before they get to invade your turf and start to steal your time, you have already anticipated their actions, planned a counter action that best suits you and, in most cases, they are no worse for the experience.

A short example

Arranging appointments at your location is a massive time waster and time interrupter. People come and go late, arrive early, meetings last too long, start late, end early. A real mess. What I do to get a handle on this situation is schedule ALL of my in-house appointments on the same day, bunched together. In my case, it's Thursdays, starting at Noon, every 15 minutes for short ones, 30 minutes for longer ones.

This process allows for the long ones that run short, the short ones that run long, as well as the late ones and the early ones. Using this process means I only have one interruption to my work schedule, the one at the beginning. If I have 7 meetings and I do not drive the agenda and let the 7 appointments pick their own times throughout the week, I will be interrupted 7 times instead of only once, using the PTS process.

Do want to be driver or the passenger? When you are the driver, you make all the decisions, when to start, when to stop, how fast to go, how slow to go. If you are the passenger, you are at the mercy of the driver, you don't make the decisions and worst of all, you could easily drive all day long and end up in a place you had no intention of going to at all. Your time is far too important for you to let someone else have control of it. We will be showing many more ways for you to take the initiative and drive your agenda. Keep your eye open for these opportunities and take advantage of them as often as possible.

Take Control

This whole essay is about taking control of your own time. Taking control means you are the one who, whenever possible, decides what you will be doing with your time. We have given you some simple suggestions here, with many more to follow. Taking control is not as much about using the tools you will be getting but having the right attitude about your time and using that attitude to put yourself in the best possible position to get the most from the limited time we all have available to us.

I get feed back from clients and they say that my attitude makes it look like it's either them or us. That is not a bad perspective to take. As I have said, it's not a case of other people being bad and deliberately stealing your time from you, it's simply that their agenda and yours don't match. They want to go right, and you want to go left. In order for them to go in the direction they want, they want to veer into your path for a bit. Nothing too serious mind you, but enough of a veer that you have to swerve to miss them. If you have to swerve all day long to allow other people to get on their way, what happens to your progress that day?

The powerful maximizing benefit aspect of Time Management, at least the way we show it, you have great chance to anticipate the veers that people want you to take and you can plan and organize in advance so you are not put in those positions in the first place. If you are pro-active, start off from a position of strength, then you will have an excellent chance of being the windshield and not the bug.

Activity
Start looking for times in the day that if you had put yourself on the high ground, you would have fared much better. Putting yourself on the high ground would have meant that if you had planned a little better, your agenda would have prevailed instead of you following their agenda.

Look for events or activities that happen on a regular basis. Pinpoint these tasks and ask your self, "Am I getting the most out of theses situations?" If not, start to plan how these activities are working themselves out and see what you can do, in advance, to change the circumstances so they best suit you.

What really ticks you off? Pick one of them, sit down, and work out either a way that you can plan around the task, or a way where the outcome will be closer to what will benefit you.

Article Source: http://www.everyonesarticles.com

Bryan Beckstead is the creator and developer of the Power Time System and the Power Productivity Maximizer and has been involved in the Self Improvement and Self Empowerment industries for almost 35 years. If you are really serious about improving your quality of life, visit him at www.powertimesystem.com.

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