Time Management or Life Management?

 

I am constantly amazed by all the information there is out there on time management. Audios, videos, books, workshops and hundreds of websites are bombarding us with time management information. If we only had time to absorb it all!

However, most people cling to a serious fallacy where time management training is concerned, because the assumption they have is that time management will help you get more done. This isn’t really true. For one thing, the limits of the space time continuum ultimately define how much any of us can get done within a set period of time (we can’t actually expand time so we can get more done. Sorry about that). But more importantly, time management is not about getting more things done, it is really about getting more IMPORTANT things done.

Time management is really about the way we approach life. We are all given the same amount of time to use every day. The problem is that there are countless unique items competing for our attention. Some are as mundane as putting the dishes in the dishwasher and others are as profound as helping your daughter plan her wedding. In the middle of everything we go to work, mow the yard, go to work some more, watch TV, bring work home with us, sneak away for a few days of vacation (and only call work to check in a couple of times).

Life is a sequence of events that we get to participate in until we die (and move on to someplace where "time shall be no more.") So the question is not, "How do I get more stuff done?" The question is, "How do I make sure that I spend more of my time doing those things that are of the highest importance to me?" This is not really a question of being selfish; rather, it is the best way to achieve true meaning and purpose in life.

Most time management programs are all about to do lists and A-B-C priorities and goal setting and eliminating interruptions. Forget all that for a minute and just ask yourself one simple question: "What do I really want to get out of life?" You might call this time management at the macro level. I heard a guy say once that he had spent his whole life climbing the ladder, only to discover that when he finally reached the top he discovered the ladder was leaning against the wrong wall! Is that what you really want?

What do your really want to get out of life? Give this some serious thought and don’t move beyond this point until you are sure about the answer and care about it enough to want to do something about it. Once you have a good, heartfelt, deeply satisfying answer to this macro time management question, then you will have plenty of time for the to do lists and the goal setting and the dealing with interruptions that are part of all the standard time management literature. You will also probably actually care about applying those regular time management principles, because they will serve to help you steer your life in the direction you truly want to be going.

 

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August Time Management Quick Tip of the Month – Agendas Are a Real Time Saver

Nobody likes attending meetings. We are all too busy as it is, and meetings tend to steal precious chunks of time from our already frazzled day and just make it harder to get our truly important (or maybe simply urgent) tasks completed. Meetings are a necessary evil, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try to make them less evil. The best way to do this is by always creating a meeting agenda. If you are not in charge of the meeting, politely request a meeting agenda. An agenda defines the meeting purpose and itemizes the issues to be covered. It helps to keep the meeting from straying off course and gives everyone a goal to shoot for; namely, getting through the list as efficiently as possible. A meeting without an agenda is like a basketball game without hoops; you just run up and down the court but you never really get anything accomplished. Make an agenda, distribute it in advance, and stick to it. In this way you can protect at least a few more precious minutes from being shredded by the meeting monster.