A New Approach to Time Management

These aren’t time management tips and tricks you’ve encountered before. Instead, this is a call to save yourself the time and energy you often waste on unpleasant habits. Free yourself from becoming bogged down in negativity, and allow yourself more time and energy for what matters most to you.

First, a reality check. Although most people find it unpleasant, we must fully accept that the years, months, weeks, and days we have, the entirety of our life’s experiences, are finite. Not only does it have a definite beginning and end, but we do not know when that end will come. Even if we anticipate it, it will still be unexpected when it arrives.

We must indeed come to grips with this. If you cannot, let’s fake it for now and see if it sticks. Once we accept this, we can see how precious our time is. Do we want to spend our time dwelling anxiously when difficult situations arise? Or do we instead want to be able to acknowledge the problem, recognize that we feel anxious about it, let it go, and move forward?

Once we can see the effect something has on us, we can better decide how we would like to handle it. A text from a co-worker over the weekend may trigger a negative thought spiral about how challenging Monday will be when you return to the office. How would you prefer to spend your time for the remainder of the weekend? Would you like to allow the text and negative thought spiral to consume your time, attention, and mental energy? Or would you instead decide to set it aside, focus on the moment you’re in, and make it the best you can?

None of us can choose how we feel. Emotions happen as an involuntary reaction. What we can choose is how we respond to them. If we understand that the emotion is there but then choose to act differently than it drives us, we can create new habits to form the person we would rather be.

Our days are only 24 hours long, and we have only so much energy to give. We need to prioritize. Deciding to accept what is and let go of negativity so you can focus on what is most important to you is the kind of time management I think we all need more of in our lives.