Don’t let time poverty keep you from being successful

By Leigh Nixon

Leigh Nixon

Every day we are bombarded with all sorts of demands and decisions. We are overwhelmed by information, people, to-do lists and demands on our time. This may be why so many people are cranky or suffer from Situation Attention Deficit Disorder (SADD), a term coined by Anderson Consulting Institute for Strategic Change. Specifically, most of us are now in situations in which we are bombarded by so many demands for our attention that our brains close down. People are cranky for 10 reasons: time poverty, information overload, disconnectedness, prices, customer contact, computers, change, competition, speed and coming of age.

It’s a phenomenon of our time. The brain is hardwired to respond to our environment, but when it is deluged, it sort of goes numb. Information and technology will not go away. We find ourselves in a permanent fast forward in a world that refuses to stop changing. Meanwhile, we cling to our careers and bring home overstuffed briefcases each night so we don’t fall behind.

There is hope and ways you can become or remain successful in this time-impoverished world:

1. Determine your priorities and focus on them. Don’t let yourself be pulled into anything from meetings to reading, to conversations that thwart your priorities. Literally block out space on your daily ‘to do’ list for things that are important to you.

2. Say "no" to answering every single message. The average person receives 30 phone, paper and e-mail messages a day. Take care of those that are priorities and let the rest drop off. Ignore the messages that are uninvited and unnecessary.

3. Let technology work for you. Caller ID and voice mail can allow you to screen calls. For those who depend upon business coming in via phone and need to take every call, develop a way to shorten incoming sales calls.

4.Create a centering place. Whether it is in the silence of your car, or in a shower, or behind your closed door, take 15 minutes per day to practice paying attention to one thing: yourself.

  We can detect symptoms of crankiness or SADD everywhere and as we are immersed in the new millennium, the time has come to turn the tide. No one person can immediately change things, but scores of us together can. As we change at an individual level so will our culture change. It may be nearly invisible at first but positive persistence will prevail. Time poverty can be cured, one person at a time.

Leigh Nixon is president and CEO of the Simi Valley Chamber of Commerce.