Personal Time Management: Is it Time to Stop and Evaluate Where You’re Headed?

By Cheryl A. Clausen

Are you really struggling with time management? I mean really struggling. The kind of struggling that ends up in extreme stress because you’re missing deadlines, losing important pieces of information, scheduling yourself to the point you don’t have a free 15 minute period in your day. I can’t tell you how many of my clients find themselves in this very situation. They’re so time stressed they’re about ready to crack, and they think it’s all about finding some technique or trick so they can do even more. If this sounds like you I want you to stop whatever you’re doing right now because I know you’re doing something else while you’re reading this, get a refreshment, come back, and do absolutely nothing else while you read this article.

This is the personal time management message you need to read. You’ve created a life, a business, a career that you can’t live in. Unless you admit that now and make a commitment to yourself here and now to change your direction, you’re like a freight train headed for a concrete wall. It will be a devastating experience when the impact hits and your world crumbles around you, but it doesn’t have to be that way. If you’re reading this before your train wreck you’ve got time to make the changes you need to make to keep this from happening to you.

The only way for you to gain control of your life, and your time management is for you to develop a life you want to live. Sitting there right now reading this you’re thinking you don’t know how to make things slow down. You don’t know how to stop. You don’t know how to make things different. All that is true right now, but you can know. Take stock of where you are now in all aspects of your life. You have to have a clear picture of your current reality before you can understand how to get where you want to get. You’re where you are right now because you either didn’t fully plan what you wanted and therefore couldn’t implement your plans, or you allowed others around you to shape your life as it is. It’s ok, you aren’t the only one in this situation and it’s very fixable.

You don’t have to be a super hero to be a super person. After you’ve taken stock of where you are now I want you to set aside a couple hours this week to do nothing but think about how you want to live your life from this point forward. You can’t manage your time when you don’t know what your managing it for, when you don’t know what’s most important, or when you don’t know what activities hold your biggest payoff. Right now you may be spending the bulk of your time driving yourself crazy doing low value activities that aren’t taking you anywhere. You may be so focused on payoff activities that you have no time to rejuvenate and refresh. You may be spending your time all wrapped in your work trying to earn a living. To the point that your friends, family, and associates don’t even remember who you are. They’ve grown tired of asking you to do things, to spend time with them because they just get shot down. Consequently your most important relationships may be in danger of falling apart.

Once you clearly know where you are and where you want to go the next step is to take action to close that gap. What do you have to do to change your current situation to get your desired situation? Open up your calendar and find the first place there’s some white space, and start there changing how you spend your time by scheduling appointments right now for how you want to spend your time. This will enable you to get where you want to be, to live the life you want to live. Your train doesn’t have to crash. You can turn your life around right now, and soon very soon you can begin the process of creating the life you want to live.

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