Whenever I am teaching a group or coaching an individual about balance and productivity I have to address the concept of time management. It is my experience that most people struggle so greatly with managing their time that they don’t believe they have nearly enough time to do the things they need/want to do.
The first thing I educate them about is changing their thought-life from time management to life management. Time management by definition is impossible. How can we manage something in which we have absolutely no control? Time simply is. We cannot save it, make it, borrow it, find it, or any of the other multiple things we say about time. And let’s face it…as a society we say a lot of things about time because we are time obsessed.
“I don’t have time” is probably one of the most spoken phrases in the world around us. It’s a readily accepted excuse for just about everything, because everyone uses the same excuse. If we don’t have time…we have to ask ourselves…who took our time??? The answer is: NO ONE. We have all the time there is. We are not short on time.
Time is a gift. Every morning we wake up we have a fresh 24 hours. All we can do is utilize the precious 24 hours we are given each day. The key is to be investing ourselves into the things that truly matter the most to us in the time we are blessed with. In other words, we have to learn to get the most life into our time.
This starts with taking responsibility for our choices in life. To say that we don’t have enough time for something is actually blaming time for our situation. The truth of the matter is that we are choosing not to do something or we feel unable to do something because of previous choices. It comes down to how we choose to use our time.
We have to learn to get the most life into our time.
We have the same 24 hours that Bill Gates has. We have the same 24 hours a homeless person has. We have the same 24 hours regardless of our past experiences, hardships, station in life, economic situation, gifts, talents, skills, friends, etc.
We all have plenty of time to do what matters…we must, because as I said earlier, we have all the time there is.
Being in a situation of feeling that we don’t have time is typically a direct result of either poor planning skills, imbalanced priorities, lack of self-discipline, or over-committing ourselves (which is usually a combination the prior ones). The truth is that we are not taught how to utilize our time well. We are not educated in planning and prioritizing in our school systems. We must seek this on our own. In my book “Live Full, Live Well” I devote an entire chapter to the principles of life management. If you don’t have a handle on how to get the most life into your time, buy my book and read it. If you don’t buy my book, buy someone else’s. You have to be proactive. For those of you who are thinking “I don’t have time to read a book,” you need it even more!
Take a few minutes and evaluate where you are spending your time. Then think about the things in life that are truly the most important to you. Then see how they match up. If there is a disparity in how they match up, it’s time to make some changes
