Many of us feel overwhelmed in this moment. Everything is constantly changing, and the world is becoming increasingly complex at a much more rapid pace than before.
Many of my clients reach out for time management tips. We want to try to control time in order to help us figure out how to get everything done and successfully meet all the responsibilities of our many roles. We want to be more efficient at work so we can have a greater impact. We want to also be more present with our families and friends. We yearn to cultivate more balance between work and personal life.
We have great expectations about what we want to do with our time, yet, many of us have internalized certain ideas about time which prevent us from living into our desires.
In this three-part blog post, I will share three powerful ideas about time management. I have synthesized these three principles after many years of reading about this topic and experimenting with my own time management.
Powerful Time Principle Number One
For as long as we are alive, the ability to make increasingly better choices about what to do with our time is available to us.
You are not at the mercy of time. You are not an object of time. The clock doesn't own you and time does not control you. You are one of the most powerful being in existence, a human being, and you can choose what to do with your time. Time management expert Laura Vanderkam (one of my favorite writers on this topic) likened our time to a blank canvas; each one of us is the artist of their canvas, and it is up to us how to paint it.
Having understood this principle, it is important to start eliminating certain victimizing words from our vocabulary, such as, "I don't have time," etc., as these and other phrases suggest that we have no agency over our choices. We need to feel more empowered about our time.
Yes, you have a choice about how to spend your time, and at the same time, you really have no control over the time you have left, as you probably do not know the exact moment you will take your last breath. Because we don't know how much time we've got left on this earth, I challenge us to ask ourselves the following questions...
Discussion Questions 1. To what extent do you feel that you make choices about what to do with your time? 2. Explain a situation in which choosing might be difficult and analyze all the constraints and factors which influence your ability to choose. For each constraint or factor, what other choices are available to you? 3. If you knew you were going to die in one month, in one year, in 5 years..., what would you choose to do with your time?
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