Finding time is often a matter of prioritizing and then balancing your goals against the demands and realities of the day. This is especially true if an unexpected change comes along and supersedes your carefully laid plans.
It’s very important to be clear about your time choices and set daily priorities for yourself. At the same time, it’s very important to remain flexible. Situations can change in an instant, as we have learned here in New Hampshire.
Changes and Prioritizing
Even forgetting about big, sudden changes, your life and the lives of your loved ones evolve and shift in small ways every day. Stay sensitive to ALL of the changes; you may have a legitimate reason to re-order your priorities.
A helpful way to honor these changes and give yourself some space to adjust is to build at least one half hour of open time into each day. I actually like to split this into two 15-minute slots – one near the start and one near the end of my day. Maybe time to tweak your priorities at lunchtime would make sense for you. You might experiment a little and do whatever works for you.
How do you use that time?
Use that time to review your day, your time priorities, and any changes in the landscape that are pressing (or might become so). Then identify which items on your prioritized list can be deferred and what items will move up higher on your list. This is an especially important inventory to be taking if an urgent situation arises.
It is always helpful to be making your time priority choices proactively and consciously, rather than reactively or by default or accident. Proactive time choices, based on the prioritizing you’ve already done, put you in the driver’s seat no matter what the situation!
One last note: If procrastination is a challenge for you (and it is for most of us) pay attention to how you shift your time priorities. When you notice that the same task keeps getting shifted to the bottom of your list, it may be time to ask yourself whether procrastination is the issue. If it is, then prioritizing isn’t going to help as much as it could.
How do you manage your time priorities? Is it working for you? I’d love to hear!
And here’s more help for you…
What if you could find another hour every week? You can! For more Time Finding resources, you are invited to sign up and download The New Finding Time Boundary Template. It’s FREE. And when you sign up you’ll also receive (if you don’t already) my FREE, weekly Finding Time Tips. That’s not all. You also receive my FREE, monthly Award-Winning Finding Time E-zine!
Let’s explore time together …
Speak Your Mind