There’s a saying ‘we teach what we most need to learn’. Well, I’m going to confess this couldn’t be truer when it comes to me and ‘time management’. I find myself constantly complaining about ‘not having enough hours in the day’ or wishing for another few (actually, make that 24) hours in every day. Nevertheless, I KNOW, categorically KNOW there is fundamental paradigm flaw in most approaches to time management. So this article isn’t about better ways to schedule, prioritise or use your diary. Instead, it’s about a different way of thinking about time. First up, here’s a number. 86,400 What do you think it represents? It’s the number of seconds in a day. 24 hours x 60 minutes x 60 seconds = 86,400. At the stroke of midnight, every night, we are ‘granted’ another 86,400 seconds to use. If we put a dollar sign ($) in front of that figure we’d feel rich. If we put a dollar sign in front of it and then realised someone was going to put that amount into our bank account EVERY DAY we’d feel extrememely rich. But instead, we’re all running around complaining of being ‘time-poor’. Yes, time is a non-renewable resource – once it’s gone, it’s gone. You can’t ‘save’ it in your ‘time bank’ to use the next day … whatever you don’t spend in a day is wiped from your balance at midnight and you start again fresh. So the fallacy is that it’s manageable. It’s not. Every 60 seconds another minute passes, every 60 minutes an hour passes and every 24 hours another day is over. No ‘saving’, no ‘buying’, no ‘slowing’, no ‘speeding up’. It’s a measurement unit – that’s all. So for me, it’s not about ‘managing my time’ … it’s about effectively ‘using’ my time. What am I putting into each hour of my day? Just as I make a purchasing decision every time I hand over a dollar, what is the ‘time’ decision I make about ‘spending’ this moment of time?
‘how do you want to spend your time today?’
At first this concept can be a bit confronting – notions of a finite resource having to be ‘invested’ in most effective and efficient way possible. But for me it’s actually liberating (when I remember to think of time this way). I choose to live my life the way I do – husband, two kids, own business, regular time at the gym, spending time with friends, directorships and community involvement. If I complain about ‘not having enough time’ then I’m complaining about something I can’t change. If I instead ask myself ‘how do you want to spend your time today?’ then I’m empowered to consciously choose how I ‘invest’, ‘spend’ or just ‘use’ that time (but not save it … ). So with that in mind … ‘spend’ the remainder of today being aware of how you ‘treat’ time. Are you constantly trying to ‘stretch’ it? Do you ‘complain’ about it running out or wishing you had more? No right or wrongs here … just realise that even the most successful people in the world had exactly the same amount of time as you do each and every day … 86,400 seconds. The question is … how did they use it?
