Time Management Without Really Trying

Do you ever feel pressure as project deadlines come and pass? The best advice I ever heard was to take a deep breath, exhale, relax, and cut yourself a little slack over your time management skills. Improving any skill takes time.

Unfortunately for many, improving their skill with time management is a losing battle. They just don't have the time to improve. Making time work for you is not a pretty picture after about 10 days and old habits creep back into your life.

The problem isn't totally you. Time management tends to be too big a universe. Mastery of time is a lifelong expedition. There is an old adage "the longest journey begins with a single step." This view appropriately denotes that mastering time is a continual journey and not a destination. A more realist strategy is to take smaller steps and identify what about time you actually want to improve.

Is it your accuracy, hitting a critical date every time? Or, do you want to be ready 2 days early for every project deadline? How about being 5 minutes early for all your appointments? You have some current level of performance. What if you simply improved it by 1% every month that is 12% for the year. You can see there are many aspects about time that you could more readily improve. What we are discussing are the physical aspect of time. What about the emotional ones.

I use to be terrible with time management. Actually, when I was in college my time was very productively managed. But when I began my career (near 30 years ago) that's when time management became more difficult. Yeah, my first boss helped me set goals by providing me with quarterly quotas. Yet, achieving them was another matter. Not until my son was in 4th grade just a few short years ago did I finally learn the missing elements of how to really manage time.

Oh, I have taken the "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen Covey course, attended American Management Association programs on life and career planning and have spent countless collective years with other systems to better manage my time. But I always seemed to be off the mark when reaching my desired target. What I had a hard time doing was understanding my true inner gifted purpose.

These systems have you write your defining life purpose so you have the energy to overcome all interference that may appear. With your purpose identified, it provides a sense of clarity for making choices. I have talked with many people who agreed, it was the most challenging obstacle they faced. I myself could not put into words my own purpose.

What nobody tells us is there are multiple "missions" that tear at us in life; our own altruistic desire to achieve something noble and the reality of our employer, spouse, community and extended family wanting to see results that support their defining purpose, "their happiness".

Successful people have shared, "when defining your purpose, you have to regain yourself. The self that you were when you were 6 years old. The one that loved to play. The one that easily said NO to things." You may be so far removed from that person in you that it is difficult to re-find the inner real you. You have layers of complex issues that do a great job concealing the true you. However, if you ask your higher self to reveal itself, you will get glimpses or flashes of insight into that inner child.

I would like to share with you a straightforward exercise. You might want to get a simple blank notebook for this exercise.

Step 1) For the next 10 days set aside 15 minutes every day at the same time, then answer this question:

"When I Am Living My Life Purpose, What Am I Doing?"

Each day start with a blank sheet of paper and provide 5 to 10 answers that include all your senses. Don't edit. Work as fast as you can in the 15 minutes capturing as many number of answers as you can. Avoid the urge to spend more time on this exercise. The first few days this may be hard. It will get easier after a few days.

Write what you're doing detailing your surroundings, location, time of the year, hour of the day, people you're with. Include interior and/or exterior. Describe finishes of the wall, floor and ceiling as well as objects. What about ground material and foliage. Refer to color, dimensions, weight, texture, fragrance, taste, age, tone, volume, quality, speed, temperature-every aspect of it you can possibly describe. You can draw pictures, use colors, or write long and short sentences. Grammar is less important than capturing your insights.

Details of different senses help you more completely remember. The clearer the details the greater your memory will be and the reason why you felt the way you did about the event.

For example, "I was 18 sharing a chocolate ice cream cone with my very young nephew I believe he was about 4. We were at the zoo in June on a hot summer day after lunch. My nephew had it dripping down his cheeks with a huge smile on his face. I can still feel the cold from it melting all over my hands. The twinkle in his eyes penetrated my heart totally illuminating me. I knew that some day, I wanted children of my own."

Step 2) Analyze what you wrote.

From the material you will begin to see your inner self begin to emerge. Once you start to align yourself with your purpose, time management will become a natural consequence of your actions. You will be setting your schedule to accomplish all the projects that are in your heart.

With a glimpse of your defining purpose, you will be less intimidated by others and will actually be able to help engage others in your ultimate unstoppable journey.

So now that you a path to travel, steps to take, the last remaining lesson is the acquisition of a system you can rely on. One that you can easily make habits with. Habits are formed in 5 to 15 minute intervals done every day.

And that's exactly what I discovered as I watched my 9 yr-old son learning to play an instrument or to throw a ball. It is the simplest of activities practiced for short periods but every day. Over time the impact is astonishing as my son showed me when he was in 4th grade. When we are doing what we love to do and we have a system to make it easy we become an unstoppable force playing our way through life. The pressure that you once felt is replaced by passionate desire. When the deadline approaches you already delivered extra results and you are embracing your next occasion (oh, sorry I meant deadline- LOL).

Michael Spindelman lives in Western New York, is an Engineer from RIT, a writer, trainer, mentor, 6 Sigma Champion with nearly 30 yrs experience in business development as a sr. exec and is a mature serial entrepreneur. Learn about living on purpose, time management, outstanding quality, and value driven income.