Time Management is Life Management
When you manage time, you manage life.
Alan Lakein said, “Time is life…To waste your time is to waste your life, but to master your time is to master your life and make the most of it.”
Squandered time is wasted life.
3 Challenges to Time Management
#1. Self-Limiting Beliefs
Wrong beliefs turn your calendar into a cage.
- “I have to do everything myself.”
- “I don’t have enough time to plan or prioritize.”
- “I should always be busy to show I’m productive.”
- “I am not comfortable saying ‘no’ to anyone.”
- “I’m the only one who can make this decision.”
Self-limiting beliefs are time traps.
Practical Move: Examine your beliefs. Which are holding you back?
#2. Firefighting
Beliefs lead to behaviors. Once you challenge what you think, watch what you do.
Paul Thornton writes, “The worst thing you can do is spend all your time putting out fires… Time management is about using your time effectively to focus on what matters most.”
Urgencies dilute priorities.
Practical Move: Keep your top priorities visible. Post them on your wall, your phone, or your desk.
#3. Lack of Courage
Warren Buffett says, “Success comes from saying no to almost everything.”
You can’t lead until you find courage to say no.
The courage to say no gives you control of your life.
Practical Move: Eliminate low-value tasks. Thornton says, “Identify meetings, reports, and paperwork that no longer add value—and eliminate them.”
What will you stop doing this week so you can start leading yourself?
The ideas in this post are adapted from Leadership Skills: Boost Your Effectiveness by Paul Thornton. I appreciate his commitment to clarity, brevity, and practical application.
Thanks, Dan. This is timely. I’m thinking through my life right now, wondering what the next decade should or could look like. How can I be most fruitful in the time God has given me? I want to give myself to what is important and lasting, not urgent and merely passing. To what am truly committed? Without intentional change of some kind, my life 10 years from now will look just like it does today. And in my opinion, that would be sad. Thanks for the challenge and encouragement to better manage my life.
It’s sobering to think that life will be the same 10 years from now if we don’t change something. I love my life now. I want to be open to new things as well.
Thanks Dan – always informative and timely! (no pun intended!). This brings to mind a phenomenal leader and mentor who shunned “work/life balance” as a term. His thought was that it is “life balance”. Work is part of life, not a separate entity that deserves its own carve out. To live a truly balanced life, work must be a slice of your life, not all consuming and leaving little time for other important segments.
I don’t care for the term “balance” either. It just seems bland. I suppose I don’t want to be out of balance either. It’s a conundrum.
Great post Dan. Someone who has been and still is a great influence on my life (my wife) reminds me often that life happens. That our life is not necessarily just our own. Because, how we manage our life has a great impact on the lives we touch. Whether it be at work, at church, or at home. Our time on this earth is short, so plan it and manage it well. It means more than you think!
The interesting thing about living with purpose is it centers on something outside our selves. We talk a lot about living for something bigger than ourselves. That means we aren’t the center. It’s a discomforting idea until you accustom yourself to it.