How to Lead Yourself — Time, Money, and Energy

Welcome again to 3-2-1 Take Action, where we share 3 thoughts on Leadership, 2 tips and 1 action point to help you take your leadership to the next level!

The thoughts for today build on what was shared in our last post ‘How to Lead from the Inside Out’ . In this post, we’ll be looking at 3 ways you can lead yourself from the inside so you can lead others on the outside.

The 3 thoughts for today, come in form of questions:

1. 1. Where did my time go?
   2. What happened to my money?
   3. Why do I feel so tired so often?

Where did my time go?

Have you ever picked up your to-do list and at the end of a day or week and wonder: ‘How come I’ve not knocked off any item from this list?’ What have I been doing all day or all week? If you’ve ever experienced that before, then maybe you want to read on and find out how self-leadership can help you with this.

What happened to my money?

I’ve also asked myself that question before. I had a budget, or at least I thought I did. But, for whatever reason, there was no correlation between my budget and the reality. It seemed there was a disconnect between what I had on ‘paper’ and what was happening to me.

How come I feel tired so often?

Despite your best efforts to manage your energy, you find yourself running low at certain times. Or you find out after a hard day’s work, you don’t have any drive left for family and loved ones outside of work?

If any of these 3 questions resonate with you, then read on to find some leadership tips that can help:

Leadership Tip 1:

Develop a Plan

This may sound so simple, but it’s so powerful. You may be asking ‘What’s the benefit of a plan when we know things may not go according to plan’? I am quick to respond by saying ‘The benefit of a plan is to help you know when things don’t go according to plan and help you identify how to bring things back to plan’. The plan gives you a roadmap that you can always use to adjust things till they realign with the plan.

To lead yourself better in time – develop a schedule for your day or week. First of all, identify your priorities (things that absolutely need to get done) for the day or week and then allocate time for them. I am a firm believer in scheduling everything that one considers important. I schedule time with family, I schedule time for work, I schedule time for myself (video games). Schedules are your best friend when it comes to leading yourself in the area of time.

To better lead yourself in money, develop a budget and a plan for how you will track your expenses. I used to develop a budget but not track expenses then I realized my plan was not complete without an expense tracker – it was a game-changer for me! Of course, I didn’t always follow my budget 100%, but when things were going off-budget, I knew what to do to adjust and realign with my budget.

To better lead yourself in energy, there’s an acronym that will help you identify some key areas to focus on — FREE.

F – Food: develop a plan that helps you eat foods that energize at the time you need the energy most.

R – Rest: be intentional in planning your sleeping and waking up time. Your regularity of the sleep and the duration help you with energy.

E – Exercise: physical activities at the right frequency and intensity generate body chemicals that help you sustain high-energy levels.

E – Engagement: review the activities you’re engaged in. Do they energize you or drain you? Knowing how to schedule your energizers and drainers during the day is critical for sustaining high-energy levels.

Leadership Tip 2:

Follow the Plan

A plan only benefits you when you follow it. Now, I know following a plan is not as easy as it sounds, which leads us back to the definition of self leadership (note the underlined words).

Self-leadership is the practice of intentionally influencing your thinking, feeling and actions towards your objectives” (Bryant and Kazan 2012)

Do you know how to influence your thinking, feeling and actions?

From my time of coaching clients in leadership, here are some hacks that I’ve found to work:

• Write it down – this simple action moves it from the intangible realm to the tangible – the first step to make it a reality. You can write this down on paper or a device.
• Learn more about it – taking in more information on a desire automatically begins to create in us an ability to achieve that desire both in our conscious and sub-conscious.
• Tell a friend – accountability helps you stay true in those moments of ‘weakness’ have a buddy that can call you out when you’re going off course.
• See how you’re doing – taking time to review/reflect on the past day/week will help you identify what worked and what didn’t and how to adjust for next time.

Action Step

Identify where you need to lead yourself better in one of the 3 areas (time, money and energy) and apply the tips shared above.

Remember, it’s the knowledge that you act on that makes a difference.

Share this post with someone you think it can help. Watch a related video on this to reinforce the things shared.