Lesson Learned #2 – Manage Your Time or Someone Else Will (Part 1)

Fun Fact: I started working at the age of 13 as a “lot boy” at a Car Lot in the town I grew up in. Then went on to work for a small company that traveled the southeast installing GPS systems on vehicles. From there I went on to work at a Sub Shop for a little bit and then a manufacturing company during college. My first “big boy job” was with Asurion right out of college and then ultimately joined up with Microsoft before coming here to CloudFit.

I’ve worked with many teams, many different managers and have had to coordinate a lot of tasks/projects/deliverables over the years.

One thing I’ve learned is that everyone manages their time differently AND I’ve learned that everyone could manage their time more effectively. Myself included.

For me, I started out by letting everyone else manage my calendar for me. My calendar was wide open with nothing blocked or reserved. Let anyone just schedule time as they wished.

Foreshadowing… That’s dangerous.

For a small bit of context, I grew up with both my parents working. My mom often had part time jobs until we got older and could transition to a fulltime job. My dad worked most every weekday, up early and home around dinner time.

Watching them from a distance (e.g. not sitting beside them at work each day) – my mindset was more or less that “the company” owns my time and can do whatever with it. For most of my part time gigs, that mindset was true. They wanted me for a certain window of time, to do a certain function, and to be on time.

When it comes to my career experience in IT, that mindset started to be challenged.

I started having leaders who cared less that I was at my desk for a full day and cared a lot more that I was hitting the outcomes I was being asked to hit. Before I knew it, I found that my calendar was constantly covered with conflicts and I was spending too much time constantly juggling meetings with people.

I found myself thinking “there must be a better way” and started asking some of my mentors about what they did, I started trying new ways to manage my calendar, and ultimately started standing up for myself when it came to managing my time.

Emphasis on “my”.

I’ll follow-up more next week on some tactics on this topic. For now, I want you to simply get you thinking about the question: “Am I managing my schedule or is someone else managing it for me?”