Time and again I see Time Management coming up in podcasts, webinars and articles.
On topics and about anything and everything, from small to medium to large businesses. From marketing to design, education and creativity, product or service delivery and now farming!
Last week I was interviewed for The Pasture Pod. A podcast aimed at the farming community, created by a farmer.
Not my usual audience but it’s a topic I’m fascinated by and always interested in learning more about. Avidly watching shows like This Farming Life. They have it tough!
So I was happy to say yes. I listened to the other podcasts in the Pasture Pod series “It’s About Time” to hear what issues and challenges were being discussed.
Surprisingly, they were not that different from those my more usual audience, people like you, are facing.
But with the added complexity and unpredictability of animals, nature and the weather thrown in to the mix, making it even more challenging to ‘manage’ their time.
Many farmers work long hours, 19 hour days, 90 hour weeks!
While most of us aren’t up lambing and calving at all hours or bring in the harvest and battling the weather, there are people who work 80-100 hours a week. I’ve worked with quite a few.
Few of us are rarely able to take time off because someone needs to be there to feed and care for the animals every day.
However, we can be guilty of not taking time off because we're 'too busy'. Whether it's just taking breaks during the day or taking a longer weekend or an actual holiday away from work.
Fortunately it’s unusual but long working hours are a key symptom of an imbalance that needs tackling if you
want to create good time habits.
Same, same but different
Many of the key messages in the podcast, as I listened to the community share their trials and tribulations, their ideas and strategies, were familiar:
Knowing what you want … your long-term goals and aspirations.
Something farmers don’t often get time to think about in those few minutes they get to eat and sleep.
But it’s worth spending even a small amount of time, when you can, to step back and think ‘why am I doing this’ or what do I really want?
What’s your motivation to get out of bed every day and do what you do?
Don’t stop there. Keep asking ‘why’ until you
get to the real, underlying reason.
Too busy being busy … or as one person said 'being a busy fool'.
There’s a never-ending list of jobs that need to be done. Not just daily but seasonally.
No sooner have you got to the end or crossed one off the list, it’s time to start again or two more have been added.
- Work on prioritising what’s important, rather than trying to do everything.
- When time is limited, decide where your time and effort is best spent. What will make the
biggest difference?
Start with where you are and make small, consistent changes. What little changes you can do NOW that will make a difference next week, next month, next year?
Prevention is better than cure. Rather than fixing something when it’s broken, whether that’s a piece of machinery
or a process, what can you do to prevent it from needing to be ‘fixed’ at a later date?
It could be something at work, at home or your health. Having good structure and routines can help prevent future problems.
I often hear this with comments like ...
"this time next year I want things to be different."
"I don’t what to feel so under pressure when it gets to ‘that’ time of year".
Tax returns anyone?
Simplify.
Mechanisation and technology has enabled farming to speed up the process of many manual tasks over the last few decades. But it can be very resource and time intensive.
Are there efficiencies you can introduce to the way you work?
Either optimising what you do, replacing manual processes with automation or reducing the number of steps in the process.
In farming terms, cutting out the middleman. Dealing with the consumer
directly.
The number of farm shops that have sprung up or the ways farms have diversified to reduce their costs and complexity.
Good time skills are a key factor in the success of any business, however big or small.
How you use your time and more importantly the choices you make with the time you have is important.
I think most farmers would be grateful for an extra hour in their day but ...
