Your schedule reflects your life. Chaotic schedule, chaotic life.

If you dislike your schedule, chances are, you dislike the direction your life is headed.

Time management is self-management. How do you become more effective at self-management?

3 Secrets to Self-Management: Inspection, Intention, Insistence

1. Self-Management = Inspection

  • Inspect how you spend your “time allotment”. Consider the time you spend with family, on your personal hobby, with your partner, on your personal development, and at work. 
  • Accept your self-inspection is going to be skewed. We don’t see ourselves clearly (that’s why it’s helpful to have a coach 😉). Ask others what their impressions are of how you spend your time.
  • Create a standard for yourself and discuss your standard with family, friends, mentors, or coaches.
  • Inspect what you expect. If you expect to spend more meaningful time in the areas you choose, then remember to inspect the changes and efforts you’re making at specific intervals to keep yourself on track.

2. Self-Management = Intention 

  • Many people try to govern our lives – bosses, colleagues, employees, spouses and partners, children, volunteer committees, etc…
  • Unconscious submission of our time can make us lemmings. Intentionally saying yes means we’re on board and we’re going to be in service of what we’ve agreed to do.
  • Intentionality forces us to notice when we give authority to someone. 
  • Intentionality allows us to maintain responsibility for our lives when serving others. 

3. Self-Management = Insistence 

  • Goals, priorities, and boundaries require you to insist on courage. Your courage.
  • Draw on your courage and insist on your maintaining your boundaries. If your deadline is 5pm – you can’t spend your day putting out fires for other people. You won’t make it. Insist on enforcing your boundaries where you can.
  • If your calendar is frenetic, how long are your meetings? Can you make the 60-minute meeting a 50-minute meeting so you can make your notes, gather yourself, or heaven-forbid use the restroom?
  • Insist on shedding your Wonder Person cape, you can’t save the planet all the time.

When we manage ourselves by inspecting our behaviors, intentionally addressing them, and insisting on maintaining new boundaries and solutions, we have a solid chance of liking our schedules and our lives.

If not, see sentence #1 at the top.