How many contacts in your online social spaces have you lost contact with?  How many people you deal with offline have you lost contact with?

The answer probably is you have lost contact with a large number of the people who you connected with online and offline.

Why is it people can’t keep connected on a constant bases?

All of these questions and more have the same root cause… ineffective Time Management.  What are solutions to this problem?

First, is it a problem or just the way it goes?

When it comes to colleagues or supporters of your personal and professional development you should never loss contact with them. It is very non-productive to do so.  Many times client needs, family’s schedule and personal interests will pull professionals off course from staying connected to their ‘Life Line’ supporter.  Most of the time this disconnect from building personal and professional progress is caused from a fundamental inability to manage time effectively.

Usually, what is more important comes first.  However, deciding on which of the many things a person ‘Has To Do’, ‘Needs To Do’ or ‘Want to Do’ has to be dealt with first to determine if something is ‘important’.

The people who take the ‘Family Comes First’ attitude usually find themselves years later asking themselves why they did not achieve more in their career.  Family needs and wants come frequently and making it hard for those who stand strong on placing Family first to stay connected with business partners, mentors and, sometimes, clients.

Those who take “My job comes first” approach usually find themselves with a lot of material goods and money but very lonely in their lives.  The norm for these people is to spend too many hours dealing with..or better described as fretting with… the details of doing business.  This takes away from spending any time with people who could help eliminate the need to have to fret about their business.

And, of course, those who don’t make a decision based on either a ‘Want’ or a ‘Need’ tend to never stay connected with anyone which leads them to not being very successful professionally or personally.

‘To Do’s’ Take Over

The problem with being able to spend time with everyone really starts with having too many ‘Have to Do’s’ pop up.  Even the best time manager will make the wrong decision on letting the ‘Want to Do’ override the ‘Need to Do’.

The solution is in developing better ‘Forward Thinking.  Thinking of all possible things that could pop-up when taking on an endeavor, either personal or professional, will usually eliminate them turning into a ‘Have to Do’.  Not making a commitment to take on an endeavor until a project timeline can be develop also keeps the ‘Need to Do’s from overriding the ‘Want to Do’s.

Time management is a dying art in today’s fast paced business environment.  Many friendships, families and partnerships are broken when time is not spent with each.

With most businesses turning to the internet to speed things up, the time available to keep connected with the important things in a person’s personal and professional life get shorted.  To avoid making contact, or not make contact, to those who can or will make a difference in ones’ live makes for someone to be unhappy.  Making no contact to those people willing to take their time to help in your success tells them you are not interested in their offer.

What I use as a gauge of where I spend my time is in the answer to this question… Who us it who is interested, available and willing to help me meet my personal and professional goals?  That will be the person, or persons, I will make time for.  Is that YOU?

Let me know how I can help.