This week’s Coaching Reflections video is all about valuing your time.
Your time is the fossil fuels of your life. You don’t know how much is left and it’s never coming back. So it’s really important to think about who deserves this most precious, non-renewable resource.
This small reframe can shift your relationship to unreasonable asks at work, how you approach interviews, avoid burnout, and shape what you want to do with your career and in life.
Transcript
Intro
[00:00:00] Andy Polaine: Your time is your most precious resource. So who deserves it?
My name is Andy Polaine, and every week I spend my days coaching design leaders. And in these videos, I reflect upon the common themes and questions that come up in the week.
Your time is a non-renewable resource
[00:00:12] Andy Polaine: And this week, I want to return to this topic of your time and the value of it. Because it comes up all the time in coaching sessions. I’ve done other videos about defending your time and boundaries. But I really want to restate this point.
Your time is the fossil fuels of your life. You don’t know how much is left and it’s never coming back. So it’s really important to think about who deserves this most precious, non-renewable resource.
If you’re working for an organization, most of the time, your job, ultimately, is to help them make money. Now money is a renewable resource. They’re always going to be able to get more of it, but your time is not. So any of those moments when you feel like, oh, I should probably work weekends and evenings, because I have to, because the work just has to get done, it is really important to remember what you’re actually giving up at that point. This non-renewable resource.
Now, I’m not saying you should never do that. There are obviously times when you might have to, or might want to do, but if you’re constantly in that crisis state, well, then it’s no longer a crisis. It’s just the norm.
So quite often this happens because a company’s leadership’s ambitions are greater than their willingness to resource them. And that’s why it’s so important to learn, to say no.
Our lives are just blips in history
[00:01:19] Andy Polaine: Thinking of your life in this way can be a little bit humbling. One of the things that’s part of an activity I get coachees to do is to go out into nature somewhere— forest, ocean, cliffs, or look up into the night sky at the stars— something to remind you that these things have been around for billions of years and will carry on being around for billions of years whilst your life is just a tiny little blip.
The point is that it’s not really to make you feel small. It’s to remind you of the preciousness of your time. So, I know it’s really difficult at the moment for a lot of people and when you’re applying for jobs and you get ghosted and all of that stuff is going on, which incidentally is terribly bad behavior from those companies and those recruiters. It’s also important to try and flip that script around a little bit and think, well, okay, this isn’t just about me and am I good enough for this organization?
Whether that is, you’ve got a job and it’s like, oh, am I hitting my performance targets and the hoops I’ve been told I should be jumping through. But certainly when you’re interviewing for a job, it’s a two way street. You’re interviewing that organization to see whether they deserve your most precious, non-renewable resource.
Although, that’s just a small reframe. It can really make a difference to the way you approach those interviews. And indeed move on from the ones who are taking ages to get back to you or ghosting you, or just being difficult. Your time is worth more.
Outro
[00:02:38] Andy Polaine: I hope that’s helpful for you. If you’d like to check out my coaching practice, you’ll find it at polaine.com/coaching, and I’ll put the link below. If you’ve got any of your own thoughts about this, please post a comment below. I’m always really interested to hear how other people reframe or think about things, particularly regarding how you think about the usage of your time.
Thanks very much. And I’ll see you again soon.
