I had an early lesson in time management when I was a student nurse that I suspect lots of us had with our first jobs. For many years, it stopped me from doing what was important ...
In the School of Nursing, we were taught that the most important thing was to get to know our patients by talking to them. However, all too frequently, if we were found by Sister standing around talking to the patients we would be chivvied up with the phrase "haven't you got any work to do?" from across the ward, "go and tidy up the linen room!"
We learnt two lessons from this. The strongest being that work was defined as doing something physical and just talking was a complete waste of time. The other lesson (which took longer to learn) was to multi-task, which meant we could talk to patients whilst undertaking another task.
It became easier to hide behind the mundane and metaphorically spend our work lives tidying up the linen cupboard. And all the time Sister's words rolled around in the back of our heads making us feel virtuous. We had stopped talking and were getting on with the work.
In so far that work is physical and talking is time-wasting that still niggles away at me to this day. Thank you so much Sister, you taught me well.
I now spend entire days talking to people; after all, that is a great part of my job as a consultant and trainer in business networking, but at the end of the day my first thought is still 'oh no, I've achieved nothing today!'
I find that, when they let me delve deep enough, many people who say business networking is a waste of time have the equivalent of Sister rolling around the back of their heads too.
So here are my tips on how to banish your inner Sister that really work for me:
- Remember that you're the boss, so give yourself permission to take time to talk with people. The quote by Michael Altshuler helps me. Actually, it's better to listen more than you speak (a blog in itself, I think).
Lastly, find someone else to tidy the linen cupboard!
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