Time Management: Laying The Foundations.

Try this exercise: look at all the tasks you have completed so far this week and divide them into tasks you have done for others and tasks you have done for yourself. What’s the split?

If you are like most people, 75% or more of the things you have done this week (and previous weeks) will have been done for other people.

The problem with today’s thinking on time management — and, by extension, productivity — is we have moved away from being “self-centred” towards being “task-centred”. It’s no longer about working towards becoming better, more balanced human beings and taking care of the things that matter to us: our family, health, personal development and dreams. Instead, it’s now all about checking tasks off a list and trying to juggle more meetings than there are hours in the day.

It wasn’t always like that. In the late 80s and early 90s, authors such as Stephen Covey and Hyrum Smith identified the same problem; we had moved away from focusing our time and attention on being better and towards unhappy and stressed-out box-ticking automatons.

Something has changed over the last twenty years or so. In the 90s, most individuals and companies recognised the need for balance and development of the individual. The focus was on what mattered, not how much could be done in the minimum amount of time. Today, we’ve swung back to being focused on doing more and more and lost sight of what matters to us.

You can see the results of this change. More people than ever are suffering from mental health issues. Vast numbers of people are off sick for stress-related illnesses, and customer service across whole swaths of industries has been reduced to an anonymous chatbot. (Or, if you’re lucky, a ticket number.)

It does not have to be that way. You can change this by going back to what matters to you. Your Areas of Focus are the eight essential areas all humans share. Family and relationships, health, personal finance, career, personal development, lifestyle and life experiences, spirituality and life’s purpose. Aside from the basic human needs, you need to feel fulfilment in these eight areas. When one or more of these become neglected, you will feel lost, stressed, anxious and overwhelmed.

It was this that people like Stephen Covey, Hyrum Smith, and Jim Rohn identified as the foundations of living a balanced, happy, and fulfilled life.

Sadly, today, people have become more concerned about the number of tasks on their task list and trying to juggle countless meetings. This is not sustainable, and you can see the results in the numbers of people trying to find answers in medication and diagnoses that won’t change a thing.

To build a healthy, happy and balanced life, you must begin with yourself. What you want. What is important to you?

There are numerous ways to do this. You can begin by defining what each of the eight areas of focus means to you. From there, identify what you need to do daily or weekly to maintain and develop these areas. While it may take a few days or weeks to define what your areas mean to you, carrying out the activities needed to keep these in balance won’t.

For example, if you have identified spending quality time with your family, that may involve ensuring you are home at a specific time each day for two or three hours spent with your family. You can even double up activities by taking your kids to the park to play football or enjoy an evening walk and get some exercise in.

Managing your finances is as simple as sending a given amount to your savings account each month, and your self-development might involve reading a book for thirty minutes or taking a course.

Your pathway out of the quagmire of tasks, backlogged emails, messages, and full calendars begins by identifying what is important to you and scheduling time on your calendar.

Create a blank calendar and add blocks of time for what you want to spend time on. Perhaps you would like to spend three hours each evening with your family; you can block out 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm and call it family time. Maybe you want thirty minutes for exercise each day, then perhaps 7:00 am can be blocked for exercise time. For your self-development time, you may keep a book on your coffee table to pick up when things are quiet or specify a time in the evening to sit and read or take a course.

The above are just examples; this is your life you are designing, and you want to design it for how you want to live your life.

You have enough time each day for the things that are important to you. However, you first need to identify what is important to you. If you don’t do that, you will quickly find yourself full with seemingly no time for what matters to you. Don’t let that happen.

Most time management and productivity apps today are designed to add more and more tasks and then suck you into believing all you need to do is organise all this stuff, and you’ll get sunshine and roses. No. That will not happen. Instead, find your limits, set your boundaries and focus your time and attention on what matters. And most important of all, learn to say “no”. That one word is the best time management and productivity tool you will ever have.

Thank you for reading my stories! 😊

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