Do you ever feel like you are being held hostage by the Anti-destination League? Are you the President and CEO of the Anti-destination League? Do you have trouble getting out of your own way? Are others eating your calendar away one minute at a time?
After many courses on Time Management, I have come to the realization that there is no such thing as time management. Stop! Breathe! I know! We are told we can manage time. Except, time isn’t any different than water, sunlight, or the climate in general. Time is a resource. It is ever mobile and depleting.
Here is some food for thought. You can’t manage time; you can only converse it. To that end, there is only Time Conservation. Regardless of who you are, every day occurs only once in this life time. If you don’t complete something today, you are adding it to tomorrow which will skew the rest of the week..
Trust me. It happens to us all. We are in a hurry and we miss things. Our overwhelming response is I can do it tomorrow. The big problem is that tomorrow is already spoken for on our calendars. In fact, there is no guaranteed future. There is only the present.
The Anti-destination League is always present and provides diversions on the way to completion. It can be as small as ‘needing’ that cup of coffee that leads to a conversation that takes time away from what you were doing. It can be a traffic jam on the way to work. It can be someone forgetting to tell you that they changed your schedule and you ‘wasted’ time to travel to be on-time.
I am not 100% successful in getting everything done on my list every day. Some days, it seems like the universe is out to remind me that I am vulnerable to the vagaries of time.
Let me ask you two questions:
- If you know that there are obstacles, what you do differently?
- What steps would you take to mitigate the impact on you, your co-workers, your family and your friends?
My Rule 10 Challenge for you:
- Make a to do list at least weekly. If you are really busy, a daily to do list will help. Make it at the end of the day. Mornings never give you the time you need. Someone will be looking for you to help with something. The day will then take a completely different turn.
- Develop a classification system for your to do list. Class A must be done by the end of the day. Class B by the end of the week, and so on.
- Put a due date on activities. If you can’t classify by category, you must classify by when it is due.
- Be accountable. Don’t let someone else own your time. Life is too short.
- Pick one thing. Complete it.
- Scratch it off the list. Every time that you complete something, reward yourself.
- Repeat until done. Just so you know, the list never ends. But, the number of completions will increase.
At the risk of sounding repetitive, you are your most important advocate. Conserve your time so that you get the best of yourself.
Have an absolutely amazing week.
Quotes of the Week
“You get to decide where your time goes. You can either spend it moving forward, or you can spend it putting out fires. You decide. And if you don’t decide, others will decide for you.” – Tony Morgan
“Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.” – Warren Buffett
“To do two things at once is to do neither.” – Publius Syrus
