Neither is the game of time management.
My Clients All Want to Know the Secret.
Yep. I feel for them. They want to know the three things which will solve the problem of work-life balance once and for all. For the first few sessions, they think we’re not talking about time at all.
I keep asking them to put names to emotions, remember thoughts, separate facts from fiction. They want a detailed plan on how to be more productive. They want to know how to finish their to-do lists in seconds and plow more work into less time. I keep trying to show them their thoughts.
I know how they feel. I analyzed every sentence in First Things First by Covey, Merrill, and Merrill. I spent a weekend pulling apart my filing system and making little labels after listening to, and then reading David Allen’s Getting Things Done. I made boatloads of time maps, trying to follow Julie Morgenstern’s Time Management from the Inside Out. I learned a ton by reading these works and much of it I kept.
If you can do it in 2 minutes, do it – is a keeper (David Allen)
I kept Urgent V Important, and Put The Big Rocks in First – Covey, Merrill and Merrill
I gave up being a Conquistador of Chaos and took up Time Boxing – Morgenstern
I calendar and habit stack. I pomodoro ( – thanks Francesco Cirillo ) and I use Trello.
I’m an A+ Time Management Student – but nothing stuck until I understood one thing: I’m Worthy.
Did you just groan? Just a bit?
I know – it sounds trite and you can’t buy it at the store and take it to work to solve all your problems. Sorry.
M. Scott Peck said it this way: Until you value yourself, you won’t value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.
Here’s the deal: You’re never going to be any more valuable than you are right now. There’s no such thing as self-improvement if we’re implying that we become more worthy, more important or more valuable when we change or grow.
You’re as valuable as the next guy, you’re as important as your boss and you have as much right to make decisions about your time as the CEO does. You have your own allotment of time on the planet. Nobody is going to stop you from spending it all at work – not in America, not in this century. The only person who can decide how valuable your time is – is you.
You still have to deliver value and results to the company that pays your salary – on the regular and in good faith, but as long as you think there is something more important or someone more important than your own decisions about what you’re going to do with your next 24 hours? You’re sunk. You’ll waste time, give up time and let work slide into personal time and personal time slide into work time.
You have to value yourself before you can set up a time management system that works.
It’s not easy to put a high value on yourself. You have to be very brave to do it. You have to have the courage to try it, to be willing to let people think stuff about you – to be willing to make mistakes. You have to be one tough lady, one strong dude to reign in time and make it take you where you want to go. The good news is – you can learn to value yourself and your time.
And that? Is just good to know.
If you would like to figure out how to stop seeing yourself as someone who needs fixing and start realizing that you are fine, right now – as you are, it would be my great honor to work with you. Before I worked with my coach, I really didn’t see myself as worth much. Now? I’m absolutely committed to modeling self-appreciation and helping others find their own self-compassion. Book a free session here.