Why Time Management Tools and Productivity Hacks May Not Make You More Effective

I have bones with the gurus talking about “success habits” and such. It’s a personal thing, and here is why.

I am never a morning person, and I have two kids 2.5 and 5.5.

Whenever the gurus say – for the first 90 minutes in the morning, keep everyone out so you can meditate, exercise, make green juice, journal till you turn blue and set intention for your day – I laugh.

Reality is, my kids wake up at some ungodly hour like 5.30am and no, I don’t have it in me to drag my ass up at 4am to meditate. If they find me anywhere other than my pillow, I would not have a moment of peace.

Do the highest priority tasks in the morning? Fat chance – try that as you pack lunches for two, while running after a 2.5-year-old who drops whatever he eats on the floor and demands food every 5 minutes, very loudly.

Do the income generating projects first thing? Yeah right – try it with Happy Feet in the background and “mommy play doh open” every 5 minutes.

I don’t follow the rules because if I try, I would fail miserably. Yet most people I interact with are impressed by my productivity.

I have decided that it is a losing battle to try to squeeze some arbitrary routine designed by someone who knows NOTHING about my life into my life.

So what is out there that is useful? Again, it really depends on the individual.

I gotta say though, managing your time well doesn’t mean you are being effective and efficient. If you manage you time well checking things off a to-do list that don’t matter or contribute to the growth of you – whether it’s personally, for your business or career – it’s still time wasted.

The first thing, then, is to figure out your vision and goals, then find your strength so you can use the most efficient and effective means to help you get where you want to go.

Being efficient and effective is not about having a cookie-cutter blueprint or a me-too tactic. You need the right strategies and a customized plan to give you the biggest bang for you time- and energy-bucks.

The best way to make your business and life run efficiently is to tap into your strength, and design structures and systems to maximize the income-producing potential of your strong suits.

It is easy to talk a good game about tapping into our strength and being in the flow. But putting it into practice can take some mindset muscle.

Growing up, many of us, especially women, were conditioned to be “humble” or not to show off our strengths. A lot of times, we discount ourselves thinking the things that come so naturally to us is not valuable, is “just how things are done.”

As a result, we are not deploying our genius in a way that will make our lives so much easier, at the same time generate more income.

And we have to stop beating ourselves up for “not measuring up” in areas that are not our strengths. We have to stop fearing that we are “not good enough” because we are not “well-rounded”. We have to stop feeling that we have to do everything everyone tells us, and excel in every single one.

Stop spending time, energy and money to make your weakness “better.” It will be mediocre at best and mediocrity is not where the big bucks lie.

If something is not your natural strength, you can outsource it. You can find a partner with complimentary talents. You can structure your business so you spend minimal time in those areas.

But it doesn’t mean you look the other way. Knowing your challenges can help you set up systems and routine to mitigate those weak points.

To that end, there are many strength finding assessments out there you can utilize to understand different facets of your strengths and challenges, and I find them to be very useful in helping me hone in on what to focus on so I can be efficient and effective in a meaningful way.