Pressure, stress, and the need to make effective choices about how to use time are some of the critical issues shared by most of my coaching clients, and by most business and professional people. Becoming superwomen or supermen isn’t really the answer for surviving in a speeded-up world.
Are you challenging yourself to discover more effective and comfortable ways to use your non-renewable time resources?
In trying to maintain a balance between your business and personal lives, you probably find it hard to avoid the distractions that rob you of your irreplaceable time.
These ideas may help you think a little differently about the situation.
- Time has been used as a weapon to suppress, conform, and standardize human experience. Until the industrial revolution, people operated on their own natural rhythms. In factories, everyone needed to learn to operate synchronously. In the information age 21st century, perhaps it is appropriate to reevaluate our basic beliefs about time management.
- Time is a gift when I grant it to myself or to others. I do not owe others my time, but I can choose to give it to them. I can also choose to grant myself the gift of time for myself. One woman described how she now takes out only the Christmas decorations she loves most, instead of taking them all out just to maintain tradition.
- Time is a flow; I can’t get more of it, but I can do more with it. Ideas for doing more with time included interrupting automatic patterns like reading the newspaper or watching the news. Instead, just read headlines, stop reading about who killed whom, or watch non-commercial news. Access the magazine articles you really want on the internet instead of letting them clutter up your life.
- I can take the path of least resistance, and then fully apply myself. I can pay attention to which 20% of my work produces 80% of my results, and focus on doing that instead of scattering my energy.
Here are a few simple things that make a difference. You can make a commitment to yourself to arrive for appointments a few minutes early instead of hurrying to arrive exactly on time. You can decide to stop speeding.
Once you start to think about it, you can probably discover other the little things that make you feel as if you are in better control of your life.
Time management is an important challenge for most people. Many problems arise when your priorities are based on other people’s needs instead of your own important values.
Try eliminating 50% of the things you should do from your list, by delegating them or deciding that they are not important enough to do at all. Clear out your "shoulds" to make the time to do what you really love to do.
Learn more about communicating with integrity in The Integrity Course, an online, multimedia home-study course to help you say what you think without getting fired or losing your friends.
