Simon Sinek says “Start with Why”, and he’s right. Why bother with trying to manage your time? You can’t save up time or buy more of it, or slow down your use of it. And if you get more done you’ll still never finish your list of everything. And even if you did, you’d either be bored, or your boss would give you even more to do.
I think many people suspect the if they improved their time management their boss would only give them more to do, so they resist engaging with the subject. But actually it could massively increase their happiness.
Let’s see why….
WHY
Why improve your time management? In order to Enjoy and Achieve. Enjoy your life more, both at home and at work. Achieve more, both at work and outside it. Enjoy in the present and Achieve in the future. That’s why!
WHAT
What is time management? It is maximising the time you spend on the important things. Although time is finite, your hours per day are limited, you can still maximise the time you spend on the important things by MINIMISING the time you spend on the unimportant things. This requires identifying the important/unimportant things, which is tricky but doable. It just requires a little bit of clear thinking.
For example buying food is not important. Sure it has to be done, but it’s not important, because you want to get it done in the minimum time, you wouldn’t miss it if it was gone, you’d ideally delegate it, it’s not what you want to spend your life doing, so you should squeeze it down to the minimum – and then you could have more time for the important things.
HOW
Minimise the time spent on unimportant things by
- Saying no, selectively
- Negotiating over how long you spend on things, by doing only part, getting others to help, etc
- Delegating more, which can include paying people to do things
- Having better systems – lists, automation, great tools, easier ways to do repeating tasks quickly, etc (more info on all of this at my website)
- Being less fussy about things that are unimportant. Only be fussy about important things!
onwards and upwards!
CC
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