A series about time management based on my book
You can also download a free copy of the pdf version of the book
Effective time management centres on self-care first and then appropriate response to tasks second.
This doesn’t seem relevant at first sight, does it? How can self-care have anything to do with time management? You might even be thinking, I haven’t got enough time for self-care any way!
As I mentioned above time management has nothing to do with managing time. Time cannot be managed, you can only organise yourself. How you do that is dependent on your state of well-being.
If you are in a good state of mind, and, like a roly poly doll you naturally return to a state of well-being, then organising and prioritising are not problems. You know what to do and you get on with it, without any strain. If you are not in a good state of well-being, if you are stressed, tired and feeling negative, you are going to make poor decisions about how to manage your day.
You will trip over stumbling blocks that are just not there when you are in a good state. You do not need a technique to overcome the stumbling blocks, you need to get back to a good state of mind...because then the blocks vanish...
I remember one of my mentors being asked a question about what would he do if Bill Gates lost their memory and in that state came to see him as a coach and ask for advice on how to start a business. What would he do? Would he help them start up a business and teach them some techniques, or would the coach help them to remember who they were?
The point being that you do not need to have a new strategy or technique when it is enough to remember your natural, if obscured, state of well-being from which your creativity and action flows, is your natural state.
The real work is to remember...
That is why you need a robust self-care practice and that needs to become your priority. Your well-being is the crop and your self-care is the fence around the crop. Start thinking about what you do for your own self-care.
In a seeming paradox, the more you understand the nature of Thought and how the thoughts and feelings that flow through us are not anything more than clouds passing across the sky (and nothing to have to do something about) the less actual time we have to spend on structuring a time consuming personal routine.
Life is for living not scheduling!