Make this New Year of 2018 the year when you manage time rather than assuming it manages you;
make this New Year of 2018 the year during which you design and create new or different ways
of doing things better or differently.
Everyone has 24 hours x 365 days per year x number of years in one’s lifetime.
Exactly the same amount paid into each individual’s time ‘bank’ account at one nano second past midnight on January 1st each year. How do we view that deposit? Do we even give it a thought? Does it warrant a cursory glance? Do we give a nano second’s consideration as to how we will use the time deposited? Does it even cross our minds to make one New Year’s resolution to use every nano second to the absolute max in whatever way we choose? Do we make any plans at all?
Or do we, without a scrap of consciousness, allow ourselves to be swept away on the tidal wave of time with a wild ‘wheee’ of gay abandon making it OK by thinking it’s just another year like any other. And then when 31st December arrives as it inevitably does each year wonder in genuine puzzlement as to where that year has gone and why everything we had wanted to do is still on the list [if there was ever one in existence].
Fact is if we fail to plan we plan to fail.
Maybe we labour under the misapprehension that we have no control over time. In some ways that is correct as we humans have invented time pieces of all shapes, sizes, dimensions and mechanisms and they register the regular passing of each second so that we can keep on track throughout the world.
However the control that all of us have is how we use each of those seconds. Whether we use them consciously or let them slip away without regard. What would you prefer to be in charge of your time or let it vanish unused. Even if for example you have a boss who orders how you use your time at work; a family who absorb your time at home you still can be in control of how you approach each second you spend in either situation.
How about experimenting with a different perspective?
How about valuing each second, savouring each moment, getting total pleasure in each time slot as if it might be your last? How might that change your approach to time and enable you to discover different ways of doing the same old thin
g that will make the difference?
You may be started to read this article thinking ‘Yippee! I am going to get a whole list of ways to manage my time … all the hard work will be done for me’. Nice try! How I might organise / use / appreciate my time will be radically different from yours. It is for you to take a slice of time to consider all the excuses, reasons why, reasons why not that are your favourites as to why you run out of time / don’t have enough time / can’t find time etc. And to call yourself to account to ditch the old, out dated, routine ways you have used to date and surprise yourself with how inventive you can be especially regarding procrastination.
In a Youtube clip re mobile phones Simon Sinek talks about ‘in between time’ as the time when relationships are built. He advocates using time to connect rather than being distracted by those incessant pings demanding attention. Maybe that is where you could start with managing time differently, more effectively by relegating your mobile phone to the position of a useful tool rather than a demanding toddler!
For some help with ways to manage your time bank and keep control, get in touch.
Halina Jaroszewska 2018