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Time Management-Fact or Fiction?
Time Management is the biggest weakness of any business, relationship, or profession. It is quite true that you can “never” recover from the loss of time. Time is “The Inequity of Man’s Existence”.
Quite frankly, the impact of time management begins at birth. That’s when the clock starts ticking. From that point on, everything that occurs in our lives consumes time of one kind or another. Once gone, time is NOT recoverable.
At one point or another in our lives, we discover we are NOT the master of our own time. There are 52 weeks in a year, 7 days in a week and 24 hours in a day. (By the way, 52 weeks x 7 days a week yields only 364 days per year and not 365 as we have been led to believe! I know there are astrophysical reasons why our days are longer than 24 hours. It does not help the “mind” cope with the loss of time either way.)
Life is truly broken down into four (4) important categories. You may have more or less.
Personal Time: This is YOUR time that is NOT shared. This would be things like sleep, grooming, bathing, eating, drinking etc. Some people believe we share these things. Quite honestly if you don’t do these things as an individual, you are either in a coma, on life support or lazy. This may also be some shut down or quiet time to be alone.
Family Time: This is true shared time with family. This may be a part of some of your shared personal time, however it usually describes events that are shared with family members that are not self absorbed. Helping kids with homework, playing games together, attending activities, school events, or just doing non personal time things together as a family.
Business Time: This is just plain work related stuff that creates a paycheck of one kind or another. It also includes travel to and from work, work related events, and time spent at home on work related duties.
Recreation Time: This is YOUR personal time to be active, fit or engaged in something you enjoy by yourself or with family, friends, acquaintances at the gym, etc.
Breaking down the amount of time dedicated to each of these categories your day may look something like this:
Personal Time:
Sleep…6 to 8 hours + 1 hour for bathing & grooming, about 1 hour for breakfast & dinner = 8-10 hours
Business Time:
Travel to and from work…2 hours + 8 hours work time + 1 hour lunch = 11 hours
We are already at 19 to 21 hours consumed in our day. We haven’t begun to account for Family or Recreation time. Time is quickly eroded if our routine includes watching the news, a show on TV, errands, etc.
Even the best of time managers fall into a “time deprivation trap”. This is caused by chaos in our lives such as traffic, bad weather, work related emergencies, home related emergencies, and other events to which we have no control. An extra hour here and there consumes takes quality time away from our lives.
Many believe we make up for our time shortfall on weekends. I know many of you reading this are laughing right about now! The phrase “weekend warrior” wasn’t invented yesterday. It is an ancient curse on families that believe that everything can get caught up on the weekend. Reality has proven that this time is eaten away with must do unscheduled activities and events that chip away at our well intentioned plans.
Bottom line: we are victims of time management whether we are in control or something or someone else is manipulating our lives. We like to believe we have some say as to our hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and annual schedule. It reality, the schedule has control of our time and therefore becomes a second or third party manipulator of our lives.
Want better control of your time and your life? Take the time to prioritize and categorize the four basic areas of your life. When one of these time elements get out of balance, your life can turn into CHAOS whereby you “Can’t Handle Anything Out of Schedule”.
Life should be about the balance of quality. Since time is a non caring event with no personality, you have the right to care for yourself and others in your life. Make time for life and life will make time for you.
You can follow me here on CNN or on LinkedIn at:
www.linkedin.com/in/johnmfreeborn
Quite frankly, the impact of time management begins at birth. That’s when the clock starts ticking. From that point on, everything that occurs in our lives consumes time of one kind or another. Once gone, time is NOT recoverable.
At one point or another in our lives, we discover we are NOT the master of our own time. There are 52 weeks in a year, 7 days in a week and 24 hours in a day. (By the way, 52 weeks x 7 days a week yields only 364 days per year and not 365 as we have been led to believe! I know there are astrophysical reasons why our days are longer than 24 hours. It does not help the “mind” cope with the loss of time either way.)
Life is truly broken down into four (4) important categories. You may have more or less.
Personal Time: This is YOUR time that is NOT shared. This would be things like sleep, grooming, bathing, eating, drinking etc. Some people believe we share these things. Quite honestly if you don’t do these things as an individual, you are either in a coma, on life support or lazy. This may also be some shut down or quiet time to be alone.
Family Time: This is true shared time with family. This may be a part of some of your shared personal time, however it usually describes events that are shared with family members that are not self absorbed. Helping kids with homework, playing games together, attending activities, school events, or just doing non personal time things together as a family.
Business Time: This is just plain work related stuff that creates a paycheck of one kind or another. It also includes travel to and from work, work related events, and time spent at home on work related duties.
Recreation Time: This is YOUR personal time to be active, fit or engaged in something you enjoy by yourself or with family, friends, acquaintances at the gym, etc.
Breaking down the amount of time dedicated to each of these categories your day may look something like this:
Personal Time:
Sleep…6 to 8 hours + 1 hour for bathing & grooming, about 1 hour for breakfast & dinner = 8-10 hours
Business Time:
Travel to and from work…2 hours + 8 hours work time + 1 hour lunch = 11 hours
We are already at 19 to 21 hours consumed in our day. We haven’t begun to account for Family or Recreation time. Time is quickly eroded if our routine includes watching the news, a show on TV, errands, etc.
Even the best of time managers fall into a “time deprivation trap”. This is caused by chaos in our lives such as traffic, bad weather, work related emergencies, home related emergencies, and other events to which we have no control. An extra hour here and there consumes takes quality time away from our lives.
Many believe we make up for our time shortfall on weekends. I know many of you reading this are laughing right about now! The phrase “weekend warrior” wasn’t invented yesterday. It is an ancient curse on families that believe that everything can get caught up on the weekend. Reality has proven that this time is eaten away with must do unscheduled activities and events that chip away at our well intentioned plans.
Bottom line: we are victims of time management whether we are in control or something or someone else is manipulating our lives. We like to believe we have some say as to our hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and annual schedule. It reality, the schedule has control of our time and therefore becomes a second or third party manipulator of our lives.
Want better control of your time and your life? Take the time to prioritize and categorize the four basic areas of your life. When one of these time elements get out of balance, your life can turn into CHAOS whereby you “Can’t Handle Anything Out of Schedule”.
Life should be about the balance of quality. Since time is a non caring event with no personality, you have the right to care for yourself and others in your life. Make time for life and life will make time for you.
You can follow me here on CNN or on LinkedIn at:
www.linkedin.com/in/johnmfreeborn
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