Time management. Those two words often strike fear in the hearts of Americans.
Yet the holidays are right around the corner, with travel, parties, Christmas/Hanukah lights and decorations to put up, work to do, clients to serve, friends to spend time with, gifts to buy, blah, blah, blah. The list is seemingly endless.
The common thread here is that all of these take one thing. Time.
What does the phrase time management mean for you?
Ever since I was twenty-one-years-old, fresh out of college, I have built multiple businesses from scratch, moved across country or into a new city and state where I knew no one, starting all over in both professional and personal life and was able to find immediate balance. No grass grew under my feet. I immediately built systems, built dream networks, created physical fitness routines, joined churches, discovered new friends and relationships within mere weeks of each move. I discovered something else years later—that what I was able to create and do and have in my life as a result of these abilities I possessed were seemingly born in me and abilities that not everyone tapped into or seemed to possess or have an awareness of. I discovered these abilities are rarely utilized by people and every time I shared with people what I was able to have completed in my life, they were baffled, amazed and astounded. They would all ask me the same questions.
How did I do this? What made my being a business owner, an Ironman Triathlete, a Success Coach, an author, volunteer, friend, coach—what made all that possible?
Simple answer for me was as easy as two words. Time management.
Some would argue, well, there is no such thing as time, therefore there is no such thing as time management. In a way, they are right. Let’s look at this first before we continue. Let’s get on the same page. What is time, really? What is time management?
In fifth century BC Greece, in a written work by Antiphon the Sophis, he states that, “Time is not a reality, but a concept or a measure.” Modern day philosophers have carried that belief on in stating that time is unreal or an illusion of our lives. Interesting thought!
In religion and Biblical times, scripture states that there is a, “time for everything under Heaven.” Time appears to be an appointed benchmark or turning point of sorts to measure the past, present and future. Another interesting view.
In the science arena, according to the online reference encyclopedia, Wikipedia, Einstein said that, “The only reason for time is so that everything does not happen at once.” In this regard, Einstein said that time was basically what a clock reads; the clock can be any action or change, like the movement of the sun. Einstein showed that people traveling at different speeds will measure different times for events and different distances between objects, though these differences are minute unless one is traveling at a speed close to that of light. Again, another point toward measurement.
I discovered that time use research is actually a field of study. Time use research is all about the allocation of time spent on different activities in our daily lives, such as time at home, at work, shopping, etc. Time use is variable dependent on access to technology as well (with Internet, television, and radio being in that department) which allows us to appear to do things quicker and be limitless in the effective communication of time, people, places and/or things, and yet I believe is still all based upon one thing. That is the aspect of how we use our time, or manage to budget our time, in our twenty-four-hour days, also a measurement that as humans we agreed to use thousands of years ago. Just as it is necessary to budget our spending of money, it is also necessary to budget our time and how we spend it. Unlike money, we are all given equal amounts of time as measured in seconds, minutes, hours in a given day, month and year of our lifetime.
