But there is a difficulty we moderns have
with time. Laura Vanderkam, who writes for the Wall Street Journal (link), points
it out very well:
“... by
lamenting our overwork and sleep deprivation—even if that requires workweek
inflation and claiming our worst nights are typical—we show that we are
dedicated to our jobs and our families. Being "busy" and
"starved for time" is a way to show we matter. Put another way, it
makes us feel important.”
Taking a step back, we can ask: But what causes the busy-busy? Why do we apparently
rush and struggle all the time? Obviously Vanderkam’s words above do not
highlight the cause of our
hectic lifestyles, but give rather the explanation
that we tend to give to others, or even to ourselves. I think, for one, we will
all readily agree that we tend to pile more on the plate of life than we
actually should be eating, however let’s stop to examine one other possibly cause
of becoming busy. Maybe it will help us to understand and organize our lives
that much better.
In an article on prayer (link), I explained
that “the highly praised contemporary planning system Franklin-Covey is esteemed by
entrepreneurs because it helps them not only to organize time, but to
prioritize their lives, that is, to choose to live how and what they want to.”
Often, our hustle and bustle is caused (at least in
part) by the simple fact that we waste lots of time! This leaves us
(unfortunately) with less time to do what matters most, and we suddenly feel we
are being “rushed.”
We think we are being efficient, yet when we really
begin to calculate the hours and minutes, we realize that what we are actually
living is not exactly what we want to
live, but more along the lines of what we like
to live: as can be seen from the fact that the average (busy) American still
manages to spend four hours and 39 minutes daily watching TV (link), a
statistic which does not include “other media” such as Facebook, which is used for
an additional 7 hours per month (link).
In fact, that’s exactly what Vanderkam proved (to
herself), and goes on to share with us in her article above. She discovered
this by keeping a time-log. These are her results:
“I
soon realized I'd been lying to myself about where the time was going. What I
thought was a 60-hour workweek wasn't even close. I would have guessed I spent
hours doing dishes when in fact I spent minutes. I spent long stretches of time
lost on the Internet or puttering around the house, unsure exactly what I was
doing.”
The reason the Franklin-Covey system turned the tables
on the time organizing world, is because they focused on choice and consequence.
They train you to ask yourself a simple question, again and again: “What do I
REALLY want to do.” And then they get you to DO IT … and nothing else.
The key to avoiding wasting time
is to take the two step decision-making process and to apply it to your entire
life:
1. Decide what you want to spend your 168 hours per week on
2. And then do
everything necessary to get yourself to do it.
I hope that helps. … What’s your take?By Father Nathan Miller
I agree with your time management segment. As a homeschool mother of 7, time management has always been a challenge. It really is like creating and following a financial budget, where you earmark funds to pay certain bills as soon as the paycheck arrives. Every dollar has a purpose. In that way, you don't carelessly spend money and not have enough afterwards to pay the bills. This prevents impulse spending.
ReplyDeleteBudgeting time is the same. After morning prayer, I spend a few minutes planning my day and prioritizing my "to do" list, taking care to earmark time for those things of highest priority before anything that normally eats up time but doesn't produce much (i.e. computer time, email, facebook). Of course, flexibility is important as emergency situations sometimes arise and wipe out our "to do" list! A sick child, a distraught friend, an unexpected visit, etc. can all reprioritize what's important in an instant. That's why we say "Thy will be done"! God bless!