Men should be intentional about their time.

As much as it may seem out of the traditional scope of what being a man is, there is nothing I find more valuable than being neat and tidy about my time. Personally and professionally, I attribute nearly all of my abilities to show up as a man to my discipline within my calendar. And so, this is why I wanted to share with you that us men should always strive to manage our time better, and why. 

In short, I’ll tell you that, really more than anything, it’s to highlight to ourselves and everyone around us the intentions and executions of our power to move the world. Allow me to explain more of what I’m talking about:

First: How Well Do You Do Time?

Gentlemen, just how good are you right now at managing your time? If I could ask more practically, what’s your benchmark for good time management? Is it doing everything on your list of things for each day? Is it following your schedule to a tee?

How about: 

Good time management is incorporating all the things that make us successful in health, wealth, self-development, etc… into our time, and being able to recognize and document to ourselves the progress, setbacks, and improvements being made.

Now I believe, this a holistic and introspective benchmark to phenomenal time management. But hey, Rome wasn’t built in a day. The best things come with consistent and deliberate time and task, and that includes the nature of improving discipline and results in managing time and task. 

Again, what I want to ask you is how you feel you are doing right now with managing your time. Go ahead and take 5,10… I’d recommend 15 minutes (go on, pull out your phone timer), and just think about it. If it helps, allow me to guide your reflection with the following categories:

• Nutrition – acquiring, preparing, and eating good food

• Sleep – winding down from execution so that your brain can sift and clean itself for the upcoming time

• Exercise – physical, mental, spiritual practices that build strength and stamina

• Networking – Be it managing personal and/or professional relationships

• Prospecting – Be it on the lookout for better opportunities, recognizing and taking small bets

• Creating – here we’re talking about value for yourself and others

• Studying – The art and skill of practicing new things and getting better at old ones

• Resting – Really restoring energy for performing work, love, and growth.

• Reviewing – Call it introspecting on your own introspection, for results purposes.

These categories are, in essence, all-encompassing. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find some aspect of time in your life that doesn’t fit inside one of these. My point in this exercise: If you feel like you’ve got a good physical and mental handle on these things, then you must be an expert in time management. 

Otherwise, you’ve got work to do, and that’s okay. After all, this isn’t a day’s work. It’s life management.

But once you have an idea of where you stand as a man in today’s time and world as you are owning it, then what comes next is a really important thing: Leadership across time.

Second: How Do You Lead by Example in Time?

If leadership is the north star that guides people toward becoming better people, then time management is the paved road with guard rails built to help followers come along with you with peace of mind and recognition of your path’s stability.

Let’s put it this way when you lead by showing people definitively how you’re doing and what you’re doing with your time, then they too can perform it. By showing how you blaze the trail, others gain the power and spirit to do the same. 

As an example, consider the record-breaking achievement of the 4-minute mile run. Before this accomplishment by Roger Bannister in 1954, no one thought it possible. After Roger, hundreds of runners started doing it. They not only saw Roger reach that end-objective, but they also got to see HOW he did it – training regimen, conditions created, etc. 

See, time management is the documentation, the homework if you will, that makes following one’s leadership so much more possible. It humanizes the path to the north star. It not only says “If I can do it, so can you…”, it includes “… and here’s how:”

So in leadership, as men, we need to be very clear about our time and how we are investing it to get to where we want others to follow and come with us. And that’s across family, work colleagues, friends… When we want to set an example, we really ought to show our process throughout.

Now, with that being said, it’s normal, frankly, it’s expected of us to lead by failure as much as success. In fact, more than anything else, our greatest value in leadership as much as personal growth is in sharing truthfully our expectations next to the reality of what happens, and just how that squares up.

Let’s close things off with that:

Third & Final: Why Managing Time Well Is So Important

My biggest concern in my profession of time management is something I like to call:

The Expectation-Reality Gap, or ERG for short.

The ERG is a conundrum we find ourselves in where, as we set expectations for our time, it then becomes somewhat difficult for us to amend when we fail to meet those expectations. When reality doesn’t go our way, we get frustrated. And in leadership, those frustrations can compound across all those following your lead. So, how do we get around this issue?

More practically speaking, how do we close the gap? Well, this brings us to why managing your time well is vital to being a better person, be it just for yourself, but more importantly to the consequences of others.

By managing your time well, you set more reasonable expectations, which as a result leads to less frustration, and so more room to bridge the gap in the coming time – you get to more easily acknowledge mistakes and incorporate new learnings when the benchmark is closer than the next nearest star system.

And don’t get me wrong, I’m all for shooting the moon when it comes to managing my time. After all, that’s where the best growth happens. But when we fail to manage our time well, we may not only miss our marks (expectations) … In the worst case, we might end up going in the completely wrong direction, and not even know how we ended up there.

And so, part of managing one’s time well is to document the process as much as possible all while setting reasonable expectations to begin with in order to avoid creating such a huge gap between what you’re envisioning the future to be about, and how reality comes to unfold as your deadlines come near.

Closing

Look, can you see how important it is to our success and growth, our integrity and reputation, our morale and spirit, that we recognize and acknowledge our time well?

I hope this article brings you a sense of urgency and a call to action all on its own, that you have to become a master of your time and task. It is imperative to your state as a man and as a human being. 

Your approach to your time management is your philosophy of life, realized. When others recognize you, follow you, are supported by you, they are looking at the ways and means in which you live and do.

So show them the way as best you can. Turn in your homework. Understand your expectations.

I leave you with the following quote:

“The decisions you make and the actions that follow are a reflection of who you are. You cannot hide from yourself.” – Robert Greene

Guest Writer: Conrad Ruiz

About the writer: Conrad Ruiz is a time management consultant and coach operating under the company Well Aware Inc. Conrad’s efforts support professionals ranging from solopreneurs to company directors and teams who want to better manage all 24 hours of their day. Conrad does this through a mix of data analysis and behavioral science. His background is in biomedical engineering, business management, and entrepreneurship. Conrad aims to create a 2nd calendar for our work and personal lives, one that shows us exactly what we are doing with our time alongside what we’re trying to accomplish. You can learn more at www.wellaware.me