You can manage your time better when you manage your emotions

If you are like most leaders, you want to get better at managing your time. Let’s be honest; your workload is likely enough for two people and a couple of assistants. Yet, in the real world, it’s all up to you.

To manage their immense workloads, most people work on time management techniques. However, if you have tried that, you likely continue to struggle and continuously feel behind. My guess is that your time management strategies aren’t working as effectively as you wish they would.

So what are you doing wrong?

Why your time management strategy isn’t working:

I bet you aren’t doing anything wrong, applying the time management strategies. So why can’t you find success? Because you’ve missed an essential component required to implement any time management system effectively — Emotional Intelligence.

What do emotions have to do with time management? Everything!

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence is the ability to recognize and manage your emotions. It is being self-aware as well as having the ability to self-manage. Along with emotional Intelligence is social Intelligence. Those who are socially intelligent are both socially aware and manage their relationships.

Can you control yourself?

Consider those who are not self or socially aware or those who can’t manage themselves or others. We might call them people-pleasers, perfectionists, conformists or those who hate to rock the boat. People like this, unable to discipline themselves, persistently have difficulty with time management. It’s because they struggle to control their reactions when they are faced with:

• Urges: Oh, I’ll just check my email quickly.
• Impulses: I should ask Rebecca if she followed up on that.
• Distractions: Sound notifications on your phone — a knock on the door — an urgent call coming in.

If you can’t resist urges, impulses and distractions, no time management system is going to work for you. It is the unconscious emotional reactions attached to those urges, impulses, and distractions that cause us the most grief. Let me give you an example of how emotions play a crucial role in organizing and prioritizing your workload.

An example of emotions and time management mixing up

The back-story

Imagine you have an important report to complete this morning. You place it at the top of your To-do list. However, before you can even start the report, your supervisor walks in. She tells you the meeting she’s attending this morning is going to be tense. She fills you in on new information she’s just received. Visibly shaken, she asks for your support by attending this morning’s meeting with her. You know that it’s a meeting that may impact next year’s funding.

Ugh! Competing priorities and mixed emotions!

Self-aware

What you now need to take into account is your emotional reaction to the request to attend this meeting. A leader with high EI would notice a strong urge to rescue the employee.

► She would be aware of the physiological response in their body: Feeling her stomach churn or noticing tension in the back of their head.

►She would be conscious of the thoughts rolling through her mind: Do I say no and let her down? I can’t do that. She needs me. We need that funding! But if I say yes, it means I abandon the project for now and stay late tonight to work on it. I’d miss supper at home again.

► She would be able to name the emotions she’s experiencing:

• Worry — This meeting needs to go well.
• Disappointment — I thought I was finally going to get this report done.
• Bitter — I’m tired of this job interfering with my life.
• Miffed — I thought she was confident enough to do this job.

Socially aware

Once a high EI leader is more aware of what’s going on inside and around them, they also have to be socially aware. They would start to look at what’s happening for that supervisor.

• She’s got that “deer in the headlights” look. Panic is setting in. I can tell from her words that she’s losing confidence fast. She doubts her ability to handle the meeting.

EI strong leaders know that it is not just about them. They must also be socially aware and manage relationships.

Self-managing

A leader with high EI recognizes all of these above going on inside of them. They notice their stress response of fight or flight. This is the reactionary, crisis management mode that so many organizations live in all the time. To consciously manage all of that, the EI strong leader would ask the staff to give her a minute to consider.

After shutting the door, a strong EI leader pauses, sits down and takes a couple of deep breaths. This allows her to calm her body down. She knows short, shallow breathing is the result of stress, and that keeps her in reactionary mode. She needs to respond with a level head. For that, she needs to be calm. This allows her to get perspective on the situation. Rather than head down in the crisis and stuck in tunnel vision, she can see the bigger picture.

Then the EI leader ponders the situation and her reaction to it. She regains perspective realizing the report she’s working on also has significant funding implications. What’s more, she promised herself she would work late only one night this week, and she’s already done that. Her family needs her. Finally, turning her attention to the staff, she may remind herself that this is a strong supervisor. She’s got a level head on her shoulders, and she trusts her. She might also remember that this supervisor does tend to overreact and doubt her abilities.

With a calmer demeanour, a broader and longer view of all things to consider, the strong EI leader has a new perspective. She’s not panicking and wanting to rescue the employee. Instead, she wants to empower the supervisor and has some ideas about how she can do that.

Social-managing

Within 2 minutes, she might stand up to talk with the employee. The strong EI leader reassures the supervisor that she trusts her ability to handle the meeting. They cover a few points, making sure the supervisor has a strategy and all the information she needs. They make a plan to reconnect after lunch to debrief and decide if there are any steps they will need to take after the meeting.

Five minutes later, the leader with strong EI is back at her desk. She’s confidently working on the project that was at the top of her to-do list today, with her door shut!

You can manage your time better when you manage your emotions

Time management is more about your ability to manage yourself than your tasks. It is your emotional reaction to the task that you need to manage. With every project or person you are involved with daily, comes with him or her an emotional connection. By becoming emotionally and socially intelligent, you are better able to choose an emotional response.

Leaders work on leading others. But to do the work of strong leadership, it also requires you to learn to lead yourself. Take time to do the work of becoming more emotionally intelligent, and you’ll find you become better at time management as well!