阿杰の教室

How to Manage Your Time and Choose the Most Important Priorities in Your Life

There’s no denying that time is a luxury in today’s fast paced environment and sometimes you can’t help but feel like there is never enough of it!

Whether it is during work or off-days, people are constantly racing complete a deadline or an objective, their minds spinning with all sorts of thoughts and ideas that lead to useless stress. While that may be true for most people, it doesn’t have to happen to you!

A critical part of time management has to do with how you look at time and how you understand it. Recognize that there is always plenty of time. But if you think there isn’t enough, you will be right. If you’re always worrying about not having enough time, you’ll end up wasting even more of it.

What is Time – and How to Manage It

What you’re about to learn is a life-changing philosophy about time management that has worked extremely well for many successful people, providing them with a fulfilling life and the income to enjoy every minute of it. You can apply that same philosophy to improve the way you manage your time and reduce the stress that’s preventing you from unleashing your true potential to succeed.

The philosophy is this: Time doesn’t actually exist and is merely a man-made invention that is used to measure passing moments from one period on to another. Understanding this philosophy doesn’t mean that you should live your life in a daze and lose all awareness of what’s happening around you.

There are certainly important schedules to honour in your daily life – and people to whom you will be accountable, such as your family, your friends, and your superiors at work. But instead of worrying about whether you have time for them, the key thing is to slow down and devote your fullest attention to the Present – in anything and everything that you do.

Whenever you are with your family, make sure that every moment of your existence is dedicated to them. Whenever you are having your meals, take your time to appreciate and savour your food. The same applies to your work, business and nearly every professional relationship.

How many times have you been in a conversation with someone else and realized that you have not been paying attention? When you disconnect, you not only break the relationship, but all chances of closing an important deal. So you have to be able to switch from interaction to interaction and be totally present in each one.

How to Choose Your Priorities

One of the biggest mistakes that many busy people make is that they think they have to do everything. That’s not necessarily true. You don’t have to run every errand and you don’t have to control every activity in your life.

You can have priorities. You can learn to ask for support from people who are better at doing some things than you are. But you have to ask yourself: Is it revenue generating or not? Is it relationship-building or not? Is it a worthwhile relationship or not? Is it busy work or not? Are you giving yourself so much to do and being busy rather than being effective? Are you on your own or do you have a team?

Choose and then be present with your choice.

So if you still find your mind wandering like a wild elephant the next time you are in a conversation with someone, slow down and get 100% present again. Because when it is all said and done, there is no tally sheet that will score you on how many things you were able to do in this lifetime. There will only be the impact, the positive relationships that you nurtured and the memory of what your most important priorities were.

Be thankful for the time that you DO have. And choose wisely on how it’s being spent.

Thursday
25 Aug '11