I’m sure if you are like me, at some point in your life you’ve uttered the statements, “I wish I had a few more hours in the day,” or “Where did the time go?” Time is a treasured commodity, and because of this fact, time management is a huge issue in our lives; however, it feels like our to-do lists get longer, and our calendars get more filled.
I recently read a book entitled, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, by Oliver Burkeman. In his book, Burkeman challenges the reader’s thinking surrounding time management. Burkeman made a valid argument that our lives are actually being made worse, not better, with the typical “get-everything-done” approach to life.
Live in the moment.
You may be asking, “I thought getting more work done was the key to success?” Most time-management books focus on harnessing time and squeezing the most productivity out of the hours in our day. This isn’t a bad thing; however, the downside is that we become trained to view time as valuable only when it is spent doing something that will help us achieve a goal.
If we’re not careful, the result of this view of time is that we will have a lack of presence. We will experience an inability to be in the moment–to listen, to rest, and to be a human being. We may find ourselves feeling restless, frustrated, and not able to listen well to others. The truth is there are always tradeoffs when we try to squeeze productivity out of every minute of our lives because–unlike what we tell ourselves–we don’t have an endless amount of energy or emotional capacity to care about everything.
Rethink your time management.
When rethinking time management, it’s important to ask, “Am I holding myself to, and judging myself by, standards of productivity or performance that are impossible to meet?
We have been taught that we can always do more. For high-capacity people, I believe we really think we CAN do it all, but often, this is not reality. We have created a view of how a “perfect” human would live, and that person just doesn’t exist.
We have to remember we’re human–not God. Burkerman says, “Let your impossible standards crash to the ground. Then, pick a few meaningful tasks from the rubble and get started on them today.”
Continue doing significant things.
Only a small number of people actually “change the entire world,” but there are a multitude of humans who are doing significant, important things—including you and me. Those “important things” look very differently for each of us.
It was the stoic philosopher Seneca who said, “It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough and has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested.”
Don’t get me wrong. Having better time management is extremely important and valuable. We also need to realize that being in the moment–listening, resting, spending time with family and friends–is also of great value and importance. When we fully grasp this, we will continue to do significant and important things, but we will do them with more joy and contentment and peace. We may not have an article written about us, and we may not receive an Emmy or The Nobel Prize, but we will live a richer, fuller life.
Think about the brevity of life and the implications of what that means to you. Where are you in your “4,000 weeks”? Do you need to give yourself more permission to be a human and live in the moment?
One of the things that I believe has helped me the most is when I have had a personal coach and mentor to walk beside me to provide constructive feedback and to be a sounding board along the way. If you are interested in getting more information about coaching, please click here.
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