Time Travel
My evolution through personal productivity and time management
Post #4 of #20: I’m reflecting on twenty years of personal and professional insights in Birmingham. Visit www.medium.com/HonestlyEd to read the full #20for20 series.
I know the exact moment I fell in love with the field of personal productivity and time management.
I was 15-years-old, sitting on the second row in a corporate headquarters in downtown Milwaukee, WI. It was my first time in a classroom setting outside of school or Sunday school. The speaker was a human resources professional who spent a half day teaching a group of urban youth about time management and the Stephen Covey methodology. Thank God for INROADS.
The speaker introduced a wholly new concept to me called a “paradigm.” I didn’t know what it was yet, but it sounded fascinating.
Covey’s explanation of a paradigm was a paradigm shift in and of itself. A total reframing and rethinking of my situtation. I walked out of that corporate conference room with a fresh sense of agency and awareness that I could direct my days. A new realization that I could script my actions with intention. I could sleep on pillows of possibilities for my future and wake with a sense of purpose every single day. Life didn’t have to happen to me. I could use my creative energies to affect the world around me.