As an Olympic athlete in a timed event I know one very important thing about a ticking clock…
It won’t stop ticking.
Time is like grabbing water. The harder you squeeze it the more it slips away. And while people like to think they can “manage” time, they can’t. They can only “manage” what they do within that time.
Back in the 1990’s Stephen Covey got us all to think that we could drastically manage our time. With A tasks and B tasks and C tasks, etc. we were taught that if we just put the days tasks into nice little To-do lists that we’d be fine.
We weren’t.
And while it’s nice to think that we can manage time we really can only manage ourselves and what it is we do with our time.
Frustration comes when time slips by and we haven’t really completed anything that we feel is valuable to the goals we feel we should be achieving.
So how do we make sure we’re achieving what it is we truly want?
Decide What It is You Truly Want To Achieve:
You may have a big project you are completing for your J-O-B but what you really want to be doing is feeding starving children in Africa. That’s fine. But don’t confuse your achievement goal at work with the achievement goal that is truly in your heart. If you ignore that for too long you’ll end up with all sorts of issues from chronic pain to colitis.
Complete a Brain Dump of Everything That Is On Your Mind:
Part of what makes us feel so stressed and scattered and not “in the moment” is a feeling that we are forgetting something. When everything you have to do from picking up your kids after school to organizing your garage is pulling at you attention, it leads to feelings of incompleteness and when you feel incomplete you feel stress.
I keep a Google Doc on my phone that syncs with…well…everything, that is called 1 Brain Dump. It’s first on the list and when I think of something I need to be, do, or have, it goes on that list for later processing into an appropriate project. This way I never lose an idea and I never feel like I have some open loop hanging somewhere. Getting it all out of your head and onto a list that you trust is one way to get a picture of everything that’s on your mind.
Choose One Thing To Take Action On That Helps Fulfill Step #1
We will not go into great detail here about how to organize the list you created in Step #2, but for now you should see something on your list that jumps out at you that you should do…right now.
Do THAT thing.
Because if you don’t do THAT thing you’ll feel incomplete. It will nag and pull at your psyche until it’s done. You know you should do it. You’ll feel better once you do it. And doing that ONE thing will make you feel…better.
It’s the beginning of something great, and it’s the beginning of managing what you DO within the time that you have.
Start Now
You will only feel good about the time you have to manage when you start managing what you do in the time you have.
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“Olympian – Jonathan Edwards is a leading authority on self-esteem, time management, peak performance and success. If you’re ready to take your life to a world-class level, feel more fulfilled, have better health, and have more fun in everything that you do, sign up for his free “You. Just Better!” success tips and his 10-Day Transformation Challenge at www.TheHighPerformanceYou.com”
