In the five days leading up to the workshop Do You Have Time or Does Time Have You?, I’ll be posting daily about the ideas that work best for me when it comes to time.
Part One: I Can’t Manage Time
Whenever I work with a coaching client who uses the words “time management”, I get curious.
What would it mean to “manage” time? Time doesn’t perform better when I give it positive feedback. I can’t give time a bad performance review and then fire it. I can’t send time to human resources training.
David Allen sums this up succinctly in Getting Things Done. You can’t manage your time, he says. You CAN manage your actions.
That’s a simple and powerful switch in perspective. As long as I am trying to manage time – an intangible phenomenon that can’t be managed – I’ll feel frustrated at my losing battle. But if I switch my focus to managing my actions, suddenly I am back in control.
Next time you hear your mental chatter telling you to “manage your time better”, stop and ask yourself: Which of my actions do I need to manage better? And what would it mean to better manage my actions?
In my post tomorrow, I’ll dip into some of the action management skills that I’ve found most helpful.
[…] part one in this series: I Can’t Manage Time […]