In this day and age, there's really no excuse for any of
us to complain about our time management, even
though we all do. Time management is a skill that has
been studied from every angle for years. The result is
there are very learnable techniques available to each of
us that we can employ to improve our time management.
So, let's take a look at time management from a
30,000-foot perspective — at a level you might call "life
management."
Let's start with the question "How well do you
believe you've used your time so far in your life?" Like
every other area of our lives, some degree of introspection
is valuable and healthy; however, as we think about
how we've used our time so far, we should make sure
we don't go overboard beating ourselves up about the
mistakes or poor decisions we have made in the past.
I'd like to throw out the encouraging idea that each
of us should be able to say that we, and all of our
ancestors before us, have done a magnificent job of
using time effectively up until now from a big-picture
perspective.
Through millions of years of evolution, our predecessors
have beaten all odds in an extremely hostile
environment and somehow persisted. They survived,
ultimately producing you and me, and since our birth
we've successfully carried on and gotten ourselves perfectly
to wherever we are at this moment.
If we had taken any other turn along our life paths,
who knows where we might be today? We can second-guess
our life's decisions. For example, wishing we had
bought Microsoft stock back in 1975 — then we'd be
even wealthier today! However, if we had made any
other decisions in our past, there isn't any guarantee
that we would even be alive today, much less healthier,
wealthier, or happier.
I like this concept because it frees us from having to
spend time regretting our past. Our past has perfectly gotten
us to where we are now. We are survivors ready to
positively experience whatever our future will bring us.
One of my favorite books, A Course in Miracles, says
that "the purpose of time is to enable us to learn how to
use time constructively." It goes on to read, "Time is
thus a teaching device and a means to an end. Time will
cease when it's no longer useful in facilitating learning."
In other words, time's only purpose is to facilitate
learning. With that in mind, let's ask another real easy
question: "What are you using this lifetime to learn?
Once we know that answer, it will make our time
management a lot easier, and, as Stephen Covey says, "You'll be less likely to get efficiently to the top of the
ladder and find it's leaning against the wrong building."
Time management skills and techniques are the
ladder, but you need to make sure you are climbing to
the top of the correct building.
Once we have figured out what we're here to learn,
then we can best use our effective time management
skills and the remaining time of our lives — which is
hopefully decades rather than mere years — in pursuit
of that learning.
This certainly makes me want to look at the bigger
picture of my life and do what I can to make sure that
I'm going down the best life path for my own learning.
This brings me back to my question: "What are you
attempting to learn in this lifetime?" That ought to
keep you busy for a little time.
Vic Conant is the President of Nightingale-Conant
Corporation, the world leader in personal development. Learn more about Vic Conant.
