 Self Management
"The
Art of Self Management-Time As Gift As Well As Challenge" Part-1
As we evolve spiritually and personally it's not uncommon to develop a strong sense of the gift time is to us. Yet almost everyday, my clients, colleagues and friends -- and I'm sure many you know, comment on what an enemy they can experience time to be. How often do we all hear (or say!): - there's never enough time - there's time but I question how well I use it - he/she wastes my time - next week (or year) I'm SURE I'll have more time The purpose of this article (Part #1) is to explore different approaches to time and what time-relationships are for different kinds of people. Part 2 also posted here will include strategies and specific examples of how people successfully managing S.e.l.f bring themselves to their day. e. People are in that they can manage how they bring themselves to their time available. 2. Time is the great equalizer. It's the only thing there is we each have in equal proportion every full day of our life. 3. There is no right or wrong use of time -- it's all relative to individual purpose. Knowledge is power -- so one goal is for us to become more knowledgeable about diverse ways we can bring Self to time and befriend it so it can better serve vs challenge us. To begin, let's go to Murphy's Law, Corollary 6: "Whenever you set out to do something, something else has to be done first." Prioritizing sometimes seems like managing and sorting a million changing shades of gray. Ann McGee Cooper in her excellent book, "Time Management For Unmanageable People," draws our attention to an amazing fact: our particular culture/world is divided into two types of people in relationship to approaches to time: 1) convergent thinkers and 2) divergent thinkers. Convergent thinkers are those who jive to Franklin Planners, Day Times, and who can fit right into the Stephen Covey/Roger Merrill model of 'First Things First" absolutely beautifully. Convergers thrive on taking the whole, breaking it down into smaller and smaller pieces, lining these up sequentially -- maybe in the form of 'to do lists' or other means of prioritizing, and they simply start at the beginning and/or at the end and work forward or backward. It makes so much sense -- to a convergent thinker. Then we have many of the rest (appx another 45% to 50%) -- divergent thinkers in the approach to time. We scan the big picture, looking at a situation or task from varied, new points of view, generating more facts and ideas, creating a bigger and bigger view until we get a sense of the direction and results wanted -- which we mainly intuit and arrive at via less than adequate pre-known data for most others. But first -- we must find the outer perimeter's of many if not all of the 'what 'if's' and it's not until then we can begin to develop a series of action steps -- preferably to then take simultaneously or in much like a hop-scotch pattern. Divergent thinkers are those with a variety of piles -- all of which are essential, all of which we are moving progressively forward -- it just doesn't always look like it to the organized, sequentially ordered world of the more left-brained. Convergent thinkers are those who can actually create and stick to time-lines, critical paths with dates that stick, and schedules that flow. I've taken the time to bring this contrast forward because the majority of all of our most respected time-management systems may serve as a system of choice for possibly only about 50% true of folk. If you've failed #101 Franklin Quest or Day-Timer, give yourself a break and get McGee's book and dive into the strategies instead for the highly creative who cannot write on a calendar that size, much less stay inside the lines. Most of today's thinking about goal-setting and being organized and time- efficient is based on a belief in the importance of clock time. This is called monocratic time. However, much of life's most important stuff happens in it's own time -- not according to hands or symbols on a clock. These are polychronic happenings in nature with many complex factors at play. For example, creativity, 'eureka' breakthrough experiences, the experience of 'flow' -- some of our richest business and personal assets -- only happen during polychronic experiences of time. This is when time flies and hours pass when it only seems like minutes -- or when time stands still for us and tons of time seems available and when only 5 minutes is more than enough to achieve. Corporations and many entrepreneurs have now figured this out -- and you are seeing more and more honoring of 'flex time' or of getting it done in your own style and clock-time as long as you get it handled. Larry Dossey, M.D., physician and holistic thinker, introduces us to what he calls "hurry sickness" and the need for time therapies. He encourages all of us who want to befriend time to discover who we are in relationship to it and to honor how we fit into our timely world. Physician Stephan Rechtschaffen, founder of the world-renowned Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, brings our full attention to the timeless gift time can be to us in his book, "Time Shifting." In this he also quotes Joseph Campbell: " Eternity has nothing to do with the hereafter. This is it. If you don't get it here, you won't get it anywhere." Rachtschaffen tells us the trickle-down approach to time has basically 'trickled out' in that expecting priorities in this order to pay off don't work: First comes work; Second - primary relationship/family life; Third - life's mundane chores; Fourth - social responsibilities; Finally -- if there is any time left -- ourselves. See the accompanying Part #2 of this article posted here for examples of who many have managed Self productively in relationship to time will be brought forward. (c)
Sherry
Lowry, The Lowry Group/NexusPoint 
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