Time Management: How to handle disruptions
in your daily schedule
Time management is about taking charge of oneself.
It is about accepting responsibility for our lives
and what we choose to do with our time. Perhaps you
have no problem acknowledging that you are, in fact,
in control of your time, but in real life practice
you may find that this is a bit more difficult to
accept.
Every day life presents us with obstacles and issues
that may conflict with our goals or with our schedules
and it is easy to feel that you lack the control factor
in all of this. But regardless of what happens to
you that may affect your time management goals, you
are always responsible.
At this point your goal is to overcome these daily
obstacles with an attitude of a consultant. When you
are faced with many choices of what decision to make,
what path to turn to, or which way to handle a situation,
pretend that you are a highly-paid consultant. I'm
not talking about consulting other people, the key
here is to be a consultant to yourself. When there
is a decision to make that disrupts your daily schedule
then ask yourself: “What does Mike have to do
next?” “What would be the best use of
his time, right now, within the current situation?”
By referring to yourself in the third person, you
will be able to derive different answers for those
that would come from thinking to yourself “What
should I do next? How can I overcome this obstacle
and still keep my time schedule intact?” Instead,
by asking yourself in the third person, you will automatically
visualize yourself mentoring another person, and the
advice given will not be based on fear of what can
go wrong, but rather from a neutral mindset.
Going back to time management and making the right
choices, let's quickly cover the subject of taking
action once you have made your decision. Again, once
you have hit a roadblock in your daily schedule, quickly
assess the situation and visualize yourself as the
consultant.
Then once you have come to the conclusion of what
you need to to in order to rectify the problem, visualize
then yourself quickly tending to the task at hand
with vigor so that you can get back to your time schedule,
and then do it! Take action immediately. Do not waste
any thoughts wishing that you could be doing something
else. Do not curse the fact that your daily planning
is now off balance. Simply follow through with the
issue and get back on track ASAP. Time management
means to effectively handle surprise knocks in your
daily schedule, not just handling the goals that you
planned on paper the night before.
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