Why Time Management Begins with Life Management
Where has the time gone?!
I’m sure you’ve probably asked this question as often as I have. Life seems to fly by at an alarming rate and unless we make an effort to manage the time we’ve been given, we can easily waste many precious hours of our day.
The fact of the matter is that we’ve all been given a 24-hour day. Neither you nor I have been shortchanged. Time still passes at the same rate it always has. So what has changed?!
Perhaps our management of time has changed.
The problem is not with time. The problem lies with us. Elizabeth George stated it so well in her book, Small Changes for a Better Life, “We are the ones who have lost the use of the time allotted to us when we fail to take advantage of it.”
Instead of asking, “Where has the time gone?!” we need to be asking ourselves, “How can I manage my life in order to make better use of the time I’ve been given?”
You see, it’s more about managing our lives than it is managing our time. When we properly manage our lives, time management takes care of itself.
The following are a few basic steps we can take to better manage our lives and consequently manage our time. Each step could be elaborated on in its own post, but for now I’ll be giving you a simple summary of them.
1. Know Your Priorities
Our priorities show what is important to us and often determine the direction of our life.
Take some time to list out your priorities. Perhaps there are things you wish to make a higher priority; make a list of these as well.
Being aware of how we are (or are not) sticking to our priorities helps us manage our time better.
2. Prioritize Your Day
Our lives are constantly being pulled in multiple directions and part of time management is knowing what priority these things hold.
We must prioritize time with God, time with our spouse, time with our children, time with our family and friends, and time for work. It’s often easy to prioritize time with friends and family, but they should not hold a higher priority than God, our spouses, and our children.
We also need to prioritize time each day to take care of ourselves. If we want to be able to influence others and be a blessing to them, we must take time for ourselves. We can’t be useful to others if we are worn out and used up.
3. Plan for the Unexpected
Inevitably, things come up that interrupt the best made plans. A day should not be packed so tightly that the slightest interruption makes everything fall apart. We must be flexible when these things come up. Rather than becoming agitated by them, we should learn to view them as a Sovereign interruption from God and allow ourselves to be a blessing to others through it.
4. Eliminate the Non-Essentials
When we stop and take a serious look at how we are spending the minutes in our days, we will likely be surprised to find massive time-wasters. There are so many little things that we do out of habit that are not necessary and consume our time.
One good example of a time-waster is time spent on social media. What was intended to be a quick 5 minutes on Instagram or Facebook can quickly turn into 30 minutes, and before we know it, an entire hour has passed in which we have done nothing profitable. I’m not saying we should delete social media accounts, but perhaps it would be a good idea to schedule a time into the day to check social media accounts and set a time limit on it.
The important thing to remember is that time management cannot be accomplished simply by pulling out a planner and blocking off slots of time.
Time management must begin with life management!
