Yes, you heard me! Forget time management.

After all you can’t manage time it simply passes by whatever you do.

You can sit still and do nothing for an hour or you can buzz around doing lots of things for the same time. You’re not managing time you’re making decisions about how to spend that time.

Now that may seem a little pedantic…

However, just think about it.

If you’re not careful, and at its worst, time management becomes a matter of shoe-horning as much activity into your day as possible.

And some days that’s necessary. Maybe when reaching an important deadline or maximising the use of a person or resource you don’t often see.

Remember though, if you’re forever scheduling activities you wont have time for life.

That’s your life where you can decide exactly what you do for this hour, or this day, or this weekend. And importantly with whom.

So many people equate time management with packing in lots of activity and crossing off goals from their work, business and personal life.

It’s not.

The Importance Of Daily Decisions

It’s to do with the decisions you make each day.

Those decisions need to take into account exactly who is important to you at a business and personal level. And to my mind personal comes first because in the end when you’re 75 I’m pretty sure you’d want your personal friends around you. People you’ve met in business may be your friends too but your absence from work wont really be noticed for long. And it’s not your work colleagues fault. They’re simply getting on with their work life. Because we all adapt to the situation we find ourselves in.

The Scrooge Strategy

So before you decide how to “manage your time” think of the bigger picture. Think of what you want to be remembered for by those who love you or those who you’d like to think respect you once you’ve died. Think how Scrooge in “A Christmas Carol” was shown his past, future and present. And those scenes shocked him into change, even though he thought he’d had it all.

There’s no ghost of Christmas for you.  Instead you can make your subconscious act for you and show you the things you really believe at your core are important.

So right now jot down the following headings:

1. Personal
2. Spiritual
3. Physical
4. Work
5. Self

And against each heading note most wanted achievements, in fact everything you’d want someone at your funeral to comment favourably about.

Then decide the relative importance of each one and move them to a consolidated list. So for example item 5 in the personal list may be the most important thing for you to be known for that goes at the top of your consolidated list and item 3 in the Work list could be the second and so goes second on the consolidated list. And so on until you’ve moved all the items to the consolidated list.

Rework Your Core Each Year

Your consolidated list is your Core Personal Beliefs.

And despite what you may think they can change. For example they’ll be different before you have children, different when they go to school, different when you become a grandparent and so on. So each year review them, do they still make sense?

And then change them so you’re always reminding yourself as to why you’re doing what you’re doing and you’re the one who’s deciding how you spend time not the myriad of activities we can all spend out time doing.

Popularity: 5% [?]