Helena Sempere is a pedagogue, consultant and trainer specialized in strategy, organization and business effectiveness. Some people call all this "project management." But since all these words become difficult to understand, she likes to summarize it as “chaos manager.” Here's what she does: Helps manage work chaos. Normally she applies her advice and methodology to entrepreneurial projects, but she recognizes that everything she comments has an impact on the work (and sometimes personal) sphere of almost everyone.
"'I can't live my life' is a phrase that has become very fashionable in recent years and I would like to refute it, because it is a belief," says Sempere. We took the opportunity to talk to her about how to better manage time, to, in short, live something better, calmer and more in accordance with her own values.
Do we have more and more chaos around us?
Yes, definitely. We increasingly have more open fronts, accessibility to new information, more applications that “help” us do more things, we have more openness to the world. This is difficult to manage and creates chaos if you do not know how to control it.
Your consulting, what you explain and advise, is for the business or entrepreneurship field, but it can actually be applied in everyday life...
They are skills, habits and resources that we can apply in the professional area, but also in the personal area. Priorities, time management, chaos management and values, it is a general topic. Furthermore, the personal sphere conditions the professional sphere and vice versa. The view has to be broadened.
“You don't have life because you don't feel like it,” you say in your Instagram description… This statement is quite bold.
I put it up to draw attention to the victimhood that exists with this issue. Are we victims of this immediate and 'infoxicated' world? No, we have a responsibility for the time we waste and the things we do. We can't throw balls out. The phrase “I can't live without it” has become very fashionable in recent years, and I would like to refute it, because it is a false belief.
Is it up to each person to manage their responsibilities and time?
Control and responsibility are ours, in everything we do in life. It depends on how we take responsibility, we will manage all this better or worse. Are they invading you? And to what extent do you allow yourself to be invaded? Time management is yours, you can choose what to do and what not to do, you have to decide. If “life doesn't work for you,” it's because you don't feel like it. If we knew where to set limits and had more respect for our time and what we want to do, we would not have this feeling of lack of control in our lives.
How do we begin to put limits and order in our time?
The first step is to raise awareness. If you understand that control is in you (beyond the fact that there are activities and things that are imposed on you), the first thing you have to change is your awareness: say no, make decisions, choose, keep in mind that if you focus in one thing, you miss others. It is the first step to cultivating a more qualitative life in terms of time. Choose, think, reflect on what you want and what you don't. Be clear about your values and priorities. We don't have to reach everything, we have to be clear about where we do want to reach.
And how is this done? Any practical exercises?
Stop. Take a morning or a few hours, find a quiet space where no one will bother you. Analyze your day to day. Where are you directing your efforts? What life goals do you have, professionally and personally? Analyze what you see yourself doing, reflect on whether everything fits with what you want. Just by stopping to think you will draw conclusions. Write down on paper everything you do on a daily basis, and try to be consistent with what you want. In entrepreneurship, it often happens that you start with a motive or driving force, and over time it becomes blurred, you lose focus and your values are lost.
And when we have all this written down... How do we continue?
In terms of entrepreneurship and business strategy, I work a lot with planning, objectives and calendar. To put it into practice in more personal life issues, you have to evaluate what is important and what is urgent.
How are importance and urgency different, and what do we have to do first?
You have to evaluate the consequence that what you have to do may have. If something is urgent, ask yourself who it is urgent for and why. If it is an emergency for someone else and you don't do it, what consequence can it have? Based on this, you may have to determine if it is really urgent. The important things are what make you move, what is relevant to you. Your company is ahead of your customers, even if they have told us otherwise. If you have a business, you have to take care of it, and sometimes you may not be able to serve customers in the minute or at the time they want, for example. The importance lies in ourselves. There are few things that are urgent and important at the same time.
In moments of reflection, should we isolate ourselves? With your cell phone nearby and surrounded by stimuli, it becomes difficult to think calmly...
Sure, 100%. But it all has to do with the fear of “what if they call me?”, “what if they don't find me?”, “what if I don't answer?”. We have to work on the fear of disappearing and disconnecting, it is a deep issue. If you have a health problem and, unfortunately, you have to have surgery, you disappear for two days and nothing happens. Or if you travel and you are on a plane, you have no coverage, and it is a time capsule. Is the world ending? No. Well, to spend two hours focused on one thing, without looking at social networks or your cell phone, or taking calls, the world will not end. Like before! Without cell phones, companies worked, we did things and we did things. The mobile phone is the first thief of time, the need for absolute immediacy.
Is setting a deadline and planning the things we want to do or have to do decisive?
I say that if a task or idea is not written down, it does not exist. For me the key is to take action and not be constantly overthinking (overthinking). Where the chaos lies is more in the mind than in the execution. If we have millions of ideas running through our heads or we have thousands of things to remember, thoughts float, and when you land them on paper the ability to understand what each task means increases. When you read, you know what you have to do specifically, and if you set a date, the mind no longer has to remember it, and the feeling of anguish and chaos decreases. Furthermore, when you look at the agenda you know perfectly well what you have to do, because you have thought about it beforehand. If you do not schedule them with a calendar, tasks are extended in time as much as possible, it is called Parkinson's law. If there is no deadline, there is no frame of reference.
Another tool you give is to break up difficult tasks... How?
It all resides in the mind, and it can be very treacherous. When we have an important thing, we have to get it out of our heads, write it down, explain it, vomit it out. When you verbalize it, it makes you more aware of what it entails. If it seems like a mountain, analyze what it means, as if it were a recipe for a dish that you have to cook, or as if you had to organize a trip. Land: what do you need to do it, how much time, how many little things are involved... Little by little you can chop up the seemingly big idea that seemed like a world to you and, slowly, execute it.
Expectations and perfectionism work against us. How do we manage it?
We live in a world based on productivity and we are constantly given input to do more in less time. I am very against it because this can be applied to machines, not people. With all this, many people create self-demands and pressures because they compare themselves with others, and this disconnects them from the same reality. Everyone has their circumstances, and in the face of expectations you have to see what your reality is like. We tend to project much more than we can assume.
More than 70% of entrepreneurs have mental health problems…
Yes, it is very serious that no attention is paid to this. We are increasingly consumerist, we have to produce more, and no attention is paid to the consequences of all this. We are already seeing the effects: anxiety, depression, stress, attention deficit... We rely on quantity and not quality. We must change as a society, and put tools, in companies and in general, to improve the quality of people. We will end up having to return to the life of 30 years ago, many people will want to get away from the screens.
Can everyone start a business, can everyone have their own business?
No, not everyone can have their own business. Certain capabilities and skills are needed, beyond a career or knowledge. It goes with the character. You have to have a lot of self-criticism, a desire to stay up to date, want to understand, work hard, motivation for a topic, social skills, perseverance... It takes time, you have to take small steps, you have to be very patient, be clear about what you are doing.
