Don’t Manage Time. Manage Yourself.

Have you ever heard your friends, colleagues complain that 24 hours a day is not enough for them to do things?

They are completely right. People actually don’t have enough time to do what they want to do. Here is the evidence.

According to the latest official time management facts on American Time Use collected by The Bureau of Labor Statistics, Americans spend an average 7.6 hours per day working and 2.5 hours per day doing household activities.

On top of this, if you have children under 6 years of age, the average American spends an additional 2 hours on childcare.

This means that over half of your day is gone, with over 12 hours a day devoted to working, household and caring activities. Then there is the time for sleeping (an average of 8.6 hours) and eating.

These time management statistics show that the average American does not have a lot of time for much else other than working and sleeping. (My Time Management)

But…

Who tell you to manage time while you don’t have enough of it?

Don’t waste time on time-management.

What you can actually do, is manage yourself in relation to time.

Finding time? Losing time? Wasting time? They’re all nonsense!

Has anyone succeeded in finding your time or unfortunately lost your time? Please comment down here. Sure, waiting for someone at a coffee maybe a waste of time, but it’s only a waste of time when you don’t know how to utilize that time. How about opening your computer and doing some tasks when waiting for your friend? The truth is, you only feel “wasting time” when you pass it doing nothing.

Those 3 phrases, spoken a lot by many people, determine their expectations and attitude towards them, which really matters.

If you still believe that you can manage your time, you will soon suffer from disappointment and guilt at the end of the day. If you still hope to find time, you will get used to helpless procrastination. You can say but don’t believe in the true meaning of them.

All you have to do is to manage yourself and make better choices.

First thing first, you have to decide which one is urgent and important to you. Remember the lesson of a jar filled with golf balls, pebbles, sand, and beer? What is the right order to fill the jar with these stuffs?

“The golf balls represent the important things including your family, children, health, friends, and passions. If you lose everything except them, your life would still be full.

The pebbles represent the other things in life that matter, such as your job, house and car. The sand is everything else. The small stuffs. If you put the sand in first, there is no room for the pebbles or golf balls.

The same goes for life. If you spend all of your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are most important. Pay attention to the important things in your life”.

The last thing I want to say is that you should try to utilize the time as much us you can. Don’t wake up late, get up early and do some exercise. Don’t waste time when you’re stuck by the traffic jam, check your email on the phone. Don’t sit back because you don’t have anything to do. Actually, you do have.

And the most important is:

“Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.” ― H. Jackson Brown Jr.

It all comes down to your choices.

I wish you all will be able to manage your work- life balance and live happy with your beloved (your golf balls).

Thank you for your reading. Follow Nirow for more interesting blogs.

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