Is your time managing you?

You must have come across sentences like this: I don’t have enough time”, “I am always running late”, “I am frustrated because I feel there must be another way”, “I never find the time to do the things I really love to do”..

As a matter of fact everyone has the same amount of time in each day. Difference is that some people utilize the available time in a better way and make more out of it instead of wasting it like many other people who come up with excuses at the end. I believe that time is the same everywhere – I believe that we cannot manage our time. 24 hours a day, 168 hours a week. Not more and not less, it’s a limited resource. Instead of looking at how you manage that limited resource, what about looking at how you spend time?

We can better call it “Activity-management or Self-management” – this is what we should choose to do in our time. What activities do we want to put in our time and what activities don’t we want to put in our time. This is our choice. To take it a step further: Who decides this? I must say that each and every one of us decides that. We make new appointments and we cancel appointments. We decide how we want to manage our lives. That’s what I call “self-management”

If you ask someone to write down and track how they spend their time for a day, from the moment they wake up until the moment when they go to sleep. Writing down everything they do, from having a shower and breakfast, time they take to travel to their schools or offices, tracking the tasks at work for example meetings, answering phone calls, and e-mails etc., the time they worry about their work, household chores, shopping, cleaning and so on. We will be surprised about the outcomes. Most of the time we are not aware of ‘how we are spending our time and how much time we actually needed for certain things.

Ask yourself at least following questions:

1. Am I living a happy and balanced life?
2. Is this exactly how I want to spend my life for the next 10 years?
3. Are these the priorities in my life I really want to live for?
4. Am I investing my time on myself too?
5. What activities make me smile?
6. Where do I want to spend more time in my life?
7. What needs more attention in my life?
8. What makes me stronger?
9. How can I build the life which I want?

Now the good news is that YOU can change that whatever you are doing if you are not satisfied with your existing life style. You are in-charge and only you can manage yourself better than anybody else. You are the one who has to decide which activities you want to follow and which ones you don’t want to pursue in your life. Remember that it is also possible to say no. You are allowed to cancel an appointment in order to have more time for yourself, because, you will set your priorities in your life.

What activities would you love to do? You will decide what you want to do. For example, you would prefer going for a walk or long drive, taking a breakfast early in the morning or sleeping for late hours, listening music sitting on the coach or having lunch with a wonderful friend or doing absolutely nothing & enjoying your time alone.

What else? You can change your priorities. If you are not happy with how you spend your time, you are allowed to change your activities, and add new ones.

Following questions can help you to set your priorities:

Remember my friend, you might regain your wealth, your health, your popularity but you can never regain your time which you have already spent. So be careful with that because it is the most important asset of your life. It has to be spent wisely.