The first and most important thing to know, understand, and live about time management is that there is no such thing as time management! There is only life management, which is really self-management. When you manage your thoughts, habits, processes, and daily action initiatives you become more conscious about your activities. Yes, the clock moves and you “spend time”, but what you are really doing is managing yourself moment to moment. We all get the same twenty-four hours in a day, so the question you need to ask yourself is not how you can get everything done, but rather how you can get the most important things done. We will never be able to get rid of the concept of time because we all live on a world that spins around an axis, but keep in mind that time itself is an illusion: it’s really your habits and processes that make up who you are.
Work-life balance is not all it’s cracked up to be
Work-life balance is not always the best solution. There are all sorts of workshops that preach the importance of work-life balance, but these tips often don’t apply to our daily lives. It’s not that work-life balance doesn’t exist, but when it comes to managing your time and yourself sometimes the best thing to do is to temporarily create imbalance in your life so you can get a lot done in a short period of time. This will allow you to fully enjoy your downtime, rather than having that nagging and persistent feeling that you didn’t get done what you really wanted to accomplish. You are never going to get everything done so you must be comfortable with incompletes in some areas, but you will always have time to get the important things done.
I’m NOT saying to overwhelm yourself and fanatically and suddenly try to do everything. I’m simply suggesting to be strategic about what you imbalance; for example, if you are working on writing a book, it may make sense for you to make sacrifices in certain areas of your life so that you can imbalance your time towards the writing of your book. If something more important comes up you can always change gears, but at least you are training yourself to focus on one main thing rather than dozens of smaller things. Don’t try to change too much at once, but at least consider the fact that a little bit of imbalance is actually a good thing.
Do what works for you
Ultimately, time management is all about doing what works for you. For example, some of the businesses I’ve spoken at do not do well with planners, so rather than forcing a certain way of managing time onto them, I encourage them to do what’s best for them. That’s really the key to life itself: doing what’s best for you, regardless of external expectations and circumstances. Apply what resonates with you and discard the rest, but at least be open to trying new things before making your final judgement on a specific tactic. Once you unlock your inner wisdom and listen to yourself, time management will emerge more easily within your job (and organization as a whole) as a natural result of the right kind of thinking.
Want more tips to managing your time? Check out the keys to time management.
This is only the basecamp. To reach the summit of managing time in your organization and company culture, please check out Jeff’s website at www.jeffdspeaks.com or contact his team at 800-315-4832.
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