Last post we talked about the importance of honesty and self awareness as it relates to “managing” your life. I say “managing” because it is really just living. Living purposefully. The next step after weighing the pros and cons of the old you? Develop a plan! A plan of action that hopefully proves to be of significant value to any metric we use for the harmony and balance in our lives.
The T in SMART goals stands for “time-bound”. The project planning on an engineers or architect’s desk for a project is organized by a project flow chart, indicating completion and start times for certain tasks. A classroom, your job, a restaurant, a retail store… all run on time oriented goals. Hell, it’s even a legendary Pink Floyd song with a catchy intro. From when a store opens to when a new marketing strategy kicks in for the upcoming season– We are all slaves to time and its admirably brutal consistency.
The common denominator that earmarks our lives and determines where we will ultimately allocate our resources: time. Time is the underlying framework that we use to organize and prioritize our lives. So if there is a solution to be found, it most certainly lies within the deep dark mysterious realm of time.
Of no mystery to me… In my time mentoring young people, the most crucial skill and hindrance on performance has been time-management. Although most of these young men have entirely different goals and capabilities, all have said that time-management as well as the ability to meditate consistently were their top focus. These skills seemed to make or break performance as a whole in their minds, and they are sure of it. Not parties, not social drama, not even a lack of prefrontal cortex brain development or the monstrous debt looming over them in college. Nope, just time. How they chose to spend it.
The answers to the problems you have are on your wrist, your microwave, the top of your phone and ringing from bells in that one town with the roundabout and the courthouse. Effective time management is fundamental to any strategy. Ding Dong, ding dong.
We know this though. We know what we ought to do, and we do not do it. Often.
When we set a plan of action, we have to gauge time. So we really look at two things: (1) How much time do we spend doing anything at all and (2) How much time we NEED to spend on the those things. I find my guitar time could cut into my studying, my work could overlap with my gym time. Almost always, my obligations run into one another.
You don’t have to stop doing the things that you love to do or live like a Navy SEAL just to perform better or become more structured. No. But you need to at least get comfortable examining your life a little deeper. (make a schedule, buy a planner, use a calendar)
We fight against bad health, poor relationships, unfulfilling careers, pushy bosses, that guy in traffic that doesn’t understand the critically symbiotic relationship of merging. Kidding, don’t road rage. In reality, we only really fight one thing at the root of it all. Time is the only battle we have. The only boulder we must push up our metaphorical hills. Where we find ourselves in this constant battle is all about how prepared we are. Are we managing our time the best?
Time management is the first step to the momentum shift you want to see in your life. It is very hard to take a first step if you don’t make time to take it. Now it would be a shame if old, feeble, father time kept you from enjoying anything. So just check in on him from time to time so he doesn’t take all of it away from you.
