Why do we focus on time management?
Is it because we want to enjoy a happy and stress free life? Is it because we want to be efficient and productive at our work? Is it because we want work life balance? What is your why? Reflect on what you’ve done today. Do you feel good about what you accomplished today? Maybe you got side-tracked from your To-Do list – and you are feeling stressed and anxious about having to double down tomorrow.
Maybe you really feel great about completing a project today. Do you celebrate that win? If so, how do you sustain that feeling – or is it fleeting – and tomorrow you have another big deadline. Now your focus shifts back to stress, anxiety and overwhelm. It becomes a vicious circle.
Do you wish you could break free?
All you want is to feel good and be happy –is that even possible?
Most time management strategies are focused on something outside of us. Hence, the common approach is to change our habits or to change the external circumstances, and we end up treating time management like buried treasure: something that we have to map out, pursue and achieve in order to feel good and be happy.
Typical time management strategies may be treating the symptom versus the cause of our stress, anxiety and overwhelm. It might be hard to believe, but unless we shift our internal approach, studies indicate that the attempting to change our habits or circumstances only accounts for short term wins – and are difficult to sustain long term. Sure, we may get a high after completing a project, or fulfilling a goal but that high does not last very long.
What can you choose to change about your approach to time?
This is not to say that we shouldn’t use the many time management principles of prioritization and managing schedules. It’s only saying that if we believe feeling good about our time management choices is solely dependent on crossing the finish line, it may be impossible to feel good and be happy if we continually push that line further out with each step.
Instead of building habits and changing circumstances to manage time, consider that our long-term level of stress-free happiness is more influenced by how we choose to think and what we choose to think about.
So based on this approach, instead of searching for time management fixes on the outside, what can we do to choose stress-free happiness from within?
- When your boss is challenging – what can you choose to calm your mind? A peaceful mind is more creative and productive
- In the daily rush, can you make the choice to pace yourself? Slow is the new Fast
- What can you choose as a trigger to remind yourself to pause and reflect in a moment of stress? Stand up? Rotate your shoulders? Think about your child’s giggle?
These choices are not always easy since we are going against our natural tendencies, including our tendency to search outside ourselves to develop solutions and habits to managing our time and life.
Yet, through practice, choosing how we approach our time can also become a habit. Through practice we can more deeply realize that enjoying the time we have on the planet is not the result of managing time, but the consequence of how we choose to experience time.
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