Time Management

“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”
(unknown)

The most prevalent issue I hear clients iterate is that of time. “I don’t have enough time, I want to get better at time management, I’m so busy I’m completely overwhelmed and exhausted, how does so-and-so manage to be successful and still have time to play golf and go on vacation?” There’s about a hundred other variations on this theme, many of which might be all too familiar to you. It’s an issue many of us, including me, wrestle with on an ongoing basis.

What’s real about time, and what’s illusion? Perhaps the #1 illusion is that some people have more time (or less) than others. In fact, we all have the exact same amount of time each day, don’t we? We all have the same 24-hour-a-day pie; the variables are in how we slice the pie, how much we give away, and how much is left of the pie to both delight and nourish us (mmm, I’m hungry now).

The next big illusion is that of choice. How do you choose to spend your time? Many times, we don’t feel at choice – we feel that a big piece of the pie is taken up by obligations, leaving too little to be decided by us. How true is that, really? Some helpful questions to ask yourself might be the following:

• What did I say yes to that I now wish I’d declined?
• What are the things I feel I have to do that are strictly self-imposed?
• Am I taking care of the most important things (health, relationships, basic needs) first?
• What things are at the “now or never” point? (then, if there’s some items on the list, ask yourself again whether that’s really true)
• What’s worth doing because it will have a huge impact on your life, or you’ve always wondered about it, and don’t want to leave this world without having experienced it (like maybe, going to Paris!)
• Do I choose to do things myself that I could delegate or hire someone else to do? (such as taxes, housekeeping, landscaping).

Recognizing what you are choosing to spend your time doing can be a freeing experience. But it also means that you then need to take responsibility for it. If you have a horrendous commute to work because you choose to have a job in the city and a home in the country, recognize that you have tacitly accepted the trade-offs (i.e., traffic headaches, time in the car, transportation expense) as being worth the pay-offs (a challenging job that pays well, a home that you love). If you don’t love your choices, choose something different.

An analogy on time management I love to use at workshops that I do is one I’ve heard told a few different ways, and I’m not sure of the original source. This is my favorite rendering (and I like to actually demonstrate it physically with seminar participants):

A college professor had a big fishbowl on a table at the front of the classroom. Beside it was a pile of 6-8 fairly large rocks. The professor asked for four student volunteers. The first volunteer was asked to fill the fishbowl with the rocks. She managed to get five in. The professor asked the class, “is the bowl full?” They all nodded. The second volunteer was then given a bag of gravel, and asked to fill the fishbowl. The gravel went in around the nooks and crannies of the big rocks. The professor asked the class again, “is the bowl full?” The general consensus was again, yes. The professor then handed the third volunteer a bag of sand, and asked the student to fill the fishbowl. There was room for a good portion of the sand. This time, when asked if the bowl was full, the students said, “probably not!” Sure enough, the fourth volunteer was given a big glass of water, which managed to go into the fishbowl in its entirety.

The professor then asked the class, “So – what’s the point we’ve just illustrated?”

What do you think? Most people come up with something along the lines of, “you can always find a way to fit more in….”

The shift that I want for you is to instead realize that if you don’t put the big rocks in first (those things which are most important to you), you won’t be able to get any of them in – your fishbowl will be too full of water, sand and gravel. Put, as Steven Covey says, First Things First. Or, as Goethe said, "Things which matter most should never be at the mercy of things which matter least.”

Au revoir!

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