Focus on What’s Great About Your Use of Time
Do you have too much to do and not enough time to do it? If so, you need to spend your time more effectively. So, where do you start? You need to ask yourself, what is an effective use of your time? What time management system are you going to follow? Well, as time can’t be managed, you need to focus on managing yourself. This will enable you to free up time for what you want.
In this instance, managing yourself means discovering what works best for you in terms of spending your time effectively and on what’s important to you. This will differ for each individual, so you need to be aware of what’s right for you. First, look at how you spend your time now. Then define what you truly want to spend your time on and identify this gap. The gap may be large and potentially feels unbridgeable, but that’s okay. In moving forward, you need to focus on the next step only and not on everything that potentially needs to be done. If you find it difficult to look that far ahead, just focus on making more effective use of your time in the short term.
One way to discover the next step is to focus on what works for you, what has been good about how you spend your time and what’s important to you. The more you focus on this, the more you’ll see what works. So often we waste time focusing on what’s not working or what’s wrong. Although you need to be aware of these things, focusing on them can hold you back. Being aware of them can also give you clues as to what you need to change. What’s wrong and not working for you needs to be stated without judging yourself too harshly? Just see it as it is. Your whole energy, thoughts and actions need to be focused on what’s working. When you’re aware of these things, you feel good about yourself and more able to make changes.
When you know what’s working, it’s very easy to incorporate more of this into your daily routine, yet when you focus on what’s wrong there are often many possible solutions to work through, taking up much of your valuable time. When you focus and incorporate more of what’s right into your day, you’ll find that things fall into place quite naturally without much effort on your part. This is one of the simplest ways to discover what suits you individually as you move towards spending your time the way you want.
Focusing on what’s good and what’s working doesn’t require a large time commitment from you. After all, if you feel short of time, surely you want something simple and quick? You can also pick this idea up and implement it at any time. It doesn’t require you to learn a complete system and incorporate it all at once.
Ideally, I invite you to do this every day, it will give you impetus. At the end of your day, ask yourself:
What worked well for me in terms of effective use of my time today?
What was good about doing this?
Listen for your responses. Sometimes you may have a greater insight or even just a small clarification. It all helps.
In order to build on what’s working or is good, then ask yourself, “In what way can I incorporate more of this into my day?”. Let’s say that one success was that you had 10 minutes of uninterrupted time while you finished a report. Perhaps you decide to make this part of your routine and allot this time every day in order to complete something. After you’ve been in this routine for a while, one of the things you notice is that your tendency to be late with reports has disappeared. Now compare that with how long it may have taken you to overcome this problem if you had focused on this being wrong.
Focus on what’s great and working for you. In this way, you’ll have more time for what you truly want to do.
Wendy Hearn works with business owners, professionals and executives to discover and unlock their own inspiration, to effortlessly take the actions required to have the success they desire. To receive Wendy’s free newsletter, send an email to: newsletter@wendyhearn.par32.com http://www.Business-Personal-Coaching.com Copyright 2003, Wendy Hearn. All rights reserved.
