A sheep in wolf clothing, she called me in the time management
workshop I taught.
Her manager made her attend because of her perceived poor time management skills. I surprised her. I didn’t teach standard time management, making lists, and prioritizing. I had the class dreaming. I had them write down what they could and could not control. We talked about their beliefs on time management. It was about them. We explored how we could use their beliefs on time management and make it work.
Her beliefs and style clashed with her manager’s. She was serendipitous. He was linear. He gave her a day runner and expected her to use it. She feared technology. He embraced it. She trashed the day runner; the last I knew, she was using self-drawn mind maps overlaid on her required work Outlook calendar, which she learned to tolerate.
Achieving goals is the point of time management. Successful personal time management requires you to understand your style so that you can find, adapt, or create a time management system that best matches you and the goals you want to achieve.
When you use time management that conforms to you: your words, beliefs, values, and style, it will be a joy and almost work effortlessly for you. Otherwise, it will continue to fight you, and goal achievement will be elusive or hard-won. The caveat is that you will have to adapt if you work in a team and in an organization with different beliefs about time than you.
Here’s a mini-assessment of styles that can help you select a time management system. These are a spectrum, not either this or that. Note where you fall on the range of each of these traits.
Extraverted Introverted
Free Form Structured
Spontaneous Controlled
Informal Formal
Tactical/Auditory Visual
Open Ended Need Closure
Loves variety Loves Stability
Verbal Written
Multiple Focuses Single Focus
Morning Person Evening Person
Big Picture Details
Lots of Ideas Action Oriented
Love Starting Loves Finishing
With that as a starting point, knowing your beliefs and style, can you see how well or not your current system works for you or against you? It may be time to try something different. My next post discusses some of the time management systems.
What time management system are you using now?
How does it support you and your style?
