We hear a lot about time management, but can you manage time?
No, time management is a myth. Sorry to burst your bubble.
We all have the same amount of time given to us each day, 24 hours. We spend that time. Each one of us gets the same amount and we all spend it, then we get 24 hours more the next day.
We decide what activities we will do to spend that time.
I am hearing from a lot of people about the demands being placed on them right now with working from home and having children there, children who are now going back to school, or not.
I get asked, “How am I going to help my children and get my job done?” We have to effectively use our time and this will help you to fortify yourself, to strengthen and invigorate yourself to get what you need to do done.
We start by planning our time.
The most important thing to do is get clear on the difference between something being urgent and something being important and prioritize them.
Think of a quadrant, four boxes, two on the top and two under those. On one continuum are those things with urgency and those that are important. Then we rate those as to their importance, whether high or low.
The upper left-hand quadrant would be both urgent and important. High urgency, high importance.
- This would be something like bleeding. That affects our health and we need to take care of that right now.
What about something that is urgent, but of low importance. For me, this is my phone ringing. It is urgent because it is ringing, it needs to be answered, but I don’t know how important it is.
I have chosen to delegate this task to my assistant. She will answer, find out what is important and handle everything she can.
- Delegate those tasks that someone else can do for you.
What about low urgency and high importance?
This is something like exercising. Very important to our health, both body and mind, but it is something that we don’t necessarily need to do right now.
It could be taking one of our positivity courses or engaging a coach, taking care of our finances. These are important and if there is a deadline, like tax day, the urgency can be moved up.
- We schedule these things on our calendar so we reserve the time to get those things done.
Scheduling them takes them out of our mind, we don’t have to think about them when they are on our calendar.
The last quadrant is going to free up some time for you to do the important but not urgent things. The last quadrant are those things that are of low importance and low urgency.
These are time wasters. These are not wholesome recreation.
Wholesome recreation is low urgency and high importance, like exercise or spending time nurturing the important relationships in your life.
Mindless leisure is where you disengage your brain and turn yourself off from other people. Some people do it with video games, some with TV, some with books or social media. They eat up a lot of time, fast.
- Get rid of the items in the mindless leisure box, or limit them to 15 minutes a day.
I am confident that once you put your tasks into these four categories, you will have a plan that you can work from. It doesn't mean our plan won't change, but we can empower ourselves, fortify ourselves against what may come up that could eat up our time.
You have an excuse not to accept everything, your calendar is full of those things that are urgent and important.
Go spend your time today, and for those things that are of high urgency, low importance, like getting coaching or working on your parenting skills or personal development, go to LiveOnPurposeCentral.com. Everything is there in one easy place to fortify you for the demands of your life.