7 minute courses
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The 7 Minute Course in
Deep Time Management
IntroductionIt seems the number of people who say they are experiencing either time pressure or time famine in increasing. The mantras of our modern age are “I have too much to do” and “I just don’t have enough time”. No other generation has tried to squeeze so much activity into such a short space of time. Time seems to speed up the moment we try to do more, faster. We forget that each one of us has our own natural rhythm of thinking and doing, and we allow the rhythm of others, and the frenetic pace of technology, to drag us into the future, hence the frequent feeling that we have no control over our lives. We also forget there are two kinds of time – clock time and real or experiential time. The clock is merely a machine of measurement, a human invention designed to measure our experience of the space between two events. The clock and the watch do not tell us ‘real time’ and yet we make them our master, and look at them more often than we look at each other. Real time is your experience. The day flies by when you have a hundred and one things to do, but it drags on forever when you think you have nothing to do. We cannot control the movements of the sun and the moon and the stars, we cannot stop the passage of time as symbolised by the hands of a clock, but we can control our experience. Real time management is much more than being better organised. It is inextricably linked to our state of mind, or our state of being. The following seven insights in this short seven minute course in time management demonstrate why true time management is really life management, which is really self management…or …state of being management.
Insight 1: Joyful WorkDo you enjoy what you do? Do you enjoy your work? Have you ever noticed that when you enjoy what you do time is seldom a problem. When you enjoy what you are doing you are so absorbed and involved in the task that you seldom stop to think about time. We think we ‘have to’ go to work because we associate work with hard labour, a kind of drudgery that must be tolerated. We seldom see work for what it is. What is work? Is it something to get joy from, or something to give joy to? We are conditioned to see and think about work as a necessary activity in order to pay for the ‘good’ things in life. We see it as somewhere we have to go and get something (usually money). And so many of us leave our hearts at the door, and reluctantly do what we think we have to do – with one eye on the task and the other eye on the clock. The whole process becomes one of taking and we seldom give ourselves to our work. Notice, when you are doing what you love doing, you do what you do with love…and joy…and willingly. You are giving joy to the work, it is not giving it to you. And time is seldom, if ever, a problem. So here is the challenge:
(Careful – don’t dismiss this as pie in the sky stuff – there are thousands of people out there who have consciously looked and found what they love doing, and they are making a living doing it!! Keep asking and reflecting on the questions)
Insight 2: Converting BeliefsIn reality, time is not a managable commodity, it has no independent existence. In life there are only events, and events are what define how time passes, and that means that time management is in really event management. Most events in our life are other people, or involve other people, which means time management is event management is people management. However we cannot manage other people literally! We can only manage our own response to other people. One of the deepest beliefs we carry is that we can control other people. We learn this belief by watching our parents or teachers trying to control others as we grow up. But in truth it is impossible to control another human being. However, we do influence each other. Our relationships at work can be seen as managed influence. The moment we become upset with someone it means we are trying to control them. And the moment others sense we are trying to control them, up goes the barrier to keep us out, and down goes our capacity to influence them in that situation. All because of a learned, but now subconscious belief, that we can control what we cannot control. This in turn kills our effectiveness at getting things done with, and through others, and leaves us frustrated and stressed, wondering why the world is not dancing to our tune. This eventually turns into the paradoxical but highly enlightening insight - the more we try to control, the less influence we will have, whereas the less we attempt to control others, the more influence we will have.
Insight 3: Honest PrioritisationIf we start the day with a lot of tasks, either on paper or in our head, we are faced with the challenge of prioritisation. What should receive our time and attention first? What are our choices? We all now know there are four categories we can use to help us to create a sense of priority in our minds. Important, not important, urgent and not urgent. The real challenge comes not so much in categorising our tasks, but in the honesty with which we do it in the reality of the day. One of our deepest habits is taking something which is not important, and in our minds making it urgent, in order to avoid doing what is important. The important is usually a complex exercise requiring focused energy. The student avoids studying for their exams (very important) by making urgent a journey to see a relative about some domestic issue (which is not that important). The manager avoids calling a team meeting (important) by making a product review (not that important yet) very urgent. The father avoids spending time with the children (important) by making late nights at the office (not essential) urgent. We can do all the prioritising in the world, but it won’t make any difference to how we use our time and energy unless we are honest with ourselves.
Insight 4: Time WastersIt is absolutely true – time is life. Life is the period of time in which we have the opportunity to use all our energies (physical/mental/spiritual) in creative ways, and thereby not only create our own life, but also make our own unique contribution to the lives of others. Or, we can use it all destructively and spend our time and energy trying to take from others. Time is life is energy. At every moment we have the choice of how we spend/use the time/energy of our life. That choice begins in our heads, with our own thoughts and feelings. If we spend our time in front of the TV is this a good use of our time and energy? If we spend time just thinking about others all the time, is this a good use of our life? If we spend our time complaining and blaming others, is this the best use of our time and therefore our energy and therefore our life? If we spend the time gossiping about others is this a good use of our time? Can you see how easily we allow time, and therefore our life, to slip away, without using it in the most fruitful way. This is why most people don’t make the most effective use of their own life. Why do we do this? Is it laziness, are we too easily distracted, are we simply avoiding our own unhappiness, is it the conditioning of our culture, is it the fear of being successful, are we always envying others, or do we just lack real focus in our life? Is it any of these, or is it a bit of all these reasons? Only you know what it is for you.
Insight 5: Chosen ValuesWhat you value is what you care about the most, at any given moment. And what you care about the most is what gets your time and attention most, and very often first. Even if it’s simply the attention of your mind. According to your values, you will spend your time in much the same way you might spend your money. However, most people are not fully aware of their values and very few ‘consciously’ choose their values. Why is this? Conditioning, education, parental influences, culture, are all sources of ‘learned values’ which become subconscious values. When we do not align our actions with our consciously chosen values, it means we are aligning our actions with someone elses values. Someone else is getting our life! And this is the worst formula for contentment. When you consciously choose your values carefully you choose how you will spend the time of your life. The result? You will feel you are in control of your life, not ‘the system’, or the authority figures in your life, or the past influences in your life. Then set your goals according to your values, and lo and behold your destiny will be back in your hands.
Insight 6: ProcrastinationHow often do we convince ourselves that by delaying doing something today, we will have more time tomorrow. This is how we make it ‘seem’ that time is running away from us. And when tomorrow comes the same thing happens – we find another reason, another excuse to postpone. Why do we do this? Because we don’t feel like doing it says one inner voice, because there are more important things to be done says another voice. And a third voice says someone else could do it, should do it, will do it. And yet another voice says ‘hey, who cares, it’s not that important’! Are any of these voices speaking the truth, or is there something deeper going on. Procrastination is an obvious form of avoidance, but what is it that we are avoiding? Is it the task itself? Is it the possible outcome which might be less than we expect? Or is it something within ourselves. Every task and every person in our lives is a mirror. In the mirror of all our relationships we see ourselves and we are reminded of aspects of ourselves which are both good and bad, positive and negative. Procrastination is one way we avoid seeing ourselves, or aspects of ourselves which we would rather not face, acknowledge, explore, resolve and change. It’s as if we know that when we see what we’d rather not see, there will be real inner work to do. And that’s the kind of work that seems to have no tangible reward at the end of it. So we procrastinate, delay, avoid the task or the relationships, sometimes both, little realising we are trying to avoid ourselves. And guess what is the one thing in life you cannot avoid?
Insight 7: DelegationWe all know the value of delegating. It is a way of empowering others, of sharing the load, of giving others the opportunity to learn and take responsibility. But why don’t we do it more? Why do some people hardly ever delegate at all? For some it is the thought they do not trust others, or a particular person, to do a particular task. But underlying that is often the feeling that “I am the only one who knows how to do this”. Underneath that thought is another thought, “If I don’t do this I may well lose my position as the one who does this task, and therefore lose some of my power”. And the deepest reason why we don’t delegate is that we identify with the task. It is as if we are the task, and to lose the task, or for someone else to do the task, is to experience losing a part of ourselves (which is impossible) and therefore experience sorrow and sadness. All this of course means that our self esteem and self worth are dependent on what we do, which of course, is fatal. The solution is to see that one of our roles at work is to help others grow and learn, and be all that they can be. This is the real and most valuable task within our relationships. But before we are able to truly do that, we ourselves need to ensure our self esteem is not dependent on anything outside, but on something inside.
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