Time Management - Lesson Three: Making Choices

Did you ever stop to think that what you do with your time is directly related to what choices you make? Many people I speak to have difficulty relating managing time to making choices.

Often I get people responding to me with excuses like this, "I don't have choices, I have to go to work, I have to cook and if I don't wash clothes it won't get done so what choices do I have?"

Let's face it everything we do involves making choices, even not doing anything is a choice. We may not realize that we are choosing because we don't sit down and think, Okay, I can do the dishes or I can chat on the computer. We are more likely to think something like, I'll just check my email and then do the dishes.

Three hours later (after all we did have to answer those emails and clear out spam etc) we are either frantically trying to get three hours of work done before the husband gets home for supper, or we take one look at it and say, To heck with it! I'll do some more work on the computer." Or read a book, or any one of a number of things that we have chosen to do, rather than do what we think we have to do.

The thing is this: when you don't make conscious choices, your time slips away. Tonight when you go to bed, before you fall asleep, think back over your day. Did you have any structure to it? Did you accomplish anything? Did you enjoy your day? If not, why not?

Even though modern conveniences were supposed to give us more time for leisure, it just hasn't turned out that way. There are so many choices to make now about how we spend our time. You can't do it all and when you try to be everything to everyone and pack too much into each day, you don't leave room for the unexpected pleasures or quiet times you need to renew yourself.

In our last lesson we talked about priotizing the tasks of the day, I hope you made room for your own time, the time you need to just be you, to relax, visit a friend or enjoy time with your spouse or children.

If you aren't getting where you want to be it might be because you have been making the wrong choices. Perhaps you haven't set your goals high enough. You want to be realistic, your goals need to be something you really want to work for. You need to be able to set a date when your goal will be reached, and you need to write this all down to reinforce it in your mind.

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