Can Time Really Be Managed?
How are you doing this week? Are you executing according to plan? How’s your balance? Are you fulfilling your community responsibilities, taking your spouse on a date, playing with the kids, reading, exercising, and walking on water on a regular basis? It sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? How is it even possible to do all the things that are important to us? Here are a couple of ways that many people try:
1. Sleep 8 hours
2. Try to get everything done (without much success) in 16 hours
3. Repeat until you die
or maybe you are doing it like this:
1. Sleep 4 hours
2. Try to get everything done (without much success) in 20 hours
3. Repeat until you die at a much younger age
Seriously, you’ve heard it before, “If I just had more time I could get it all done.” The only problem is you can’t do “it all” because “it all” means everything, as in “every single thing”. If you can provide the name of one person that can do “it all” (mortals only please), then I will concede that I am wrong about this. Until then we must acknowledge that time management is a misnomer. Here are two schools of thought from two very famous people in history:
Isaac Newton: Time is absolute, regardless of human experience.
Albert Einstein: Time is relative to human experience.
Who is right? Well, ask yourself, do you remember the first few minutes of your day like this, “6:00 AM… 6:01 AM… 6:02 AM…” or more like this, “Alarm went off… hit the snooze… alarm went off again… got up… exercised… took a shower… ate breakfast… drove to work.”
The basic element of time is not the second, or the minute as Newton might have argued, but rather “the event” in our human experience as Einstein suggested. I have read similar ideas from other great authors. If there is such a thing as time management then the key to it lies in controlling our events. The only way that can be done is to make better choices about what we will do, and what we will NOT do. Who would have thought that all of this effectiveness, balance, organization, and time management stuff would all boil down to one, simple, lasting, proven principle… Accountability!
We are accountable for the choices we make. We cannot be effective and simultaneously blame others for our seeming lack of time. Personal Effectiveness and Victimism are mutually exclusive. You can’t be both a victim and effective at the same time. We all have the same amount of time, 168 hours, every week! So, improve your choices and you improve your time. In a sense you will be able to manufacture it. Oh, you won’t REALLY have more, but it will FEEL that way, and in the end that is all that matters. You will be less stressed and more productive. You will be less overwhelmed and more balanced. You will be spending the right amount of time on the right things instead of wasting time trying to do “it all.”
Success is all about choice and accountability.
So, what are your thoughts? I encourage you to post your comments and discuss your insights and paradigms. We can all benefit from sharing our successes and insights with each other.
To your Success!
Kip Kint
Success Coach & President
Mission Ignition