Making good choices

Blogs Time — 23 April 2012

By Harold Taylor –

Time is not the enemy. It is simply the medium in which we operate. Just as a fish needs water or a bird needs air in order to get from one place to another, so we need time in which to accomplish anything.

Our progress or lack of progress is our responsibility. We cannot blame it on a lack of time, since we have an ocean of time in which to operate – replenished daily and available every second of our lives. Managing time merely refers to what we choose to do in the time at our disposal.

A problem arises when we view time as a measuring stick for our accomplishments. We mistakenly think that the purpose of our lives is to get as many things done as possible in the time available to us. But a successful life is determined by what we do, not how much we do.

It’s impossible to race against time; we can only race in time – like a bird can fly faster or a fish can swim faster. Man created his own synthetic time – clock time – so he could measure his progress – challenging one another to “beat the clock” so to speak.

Man has raced against this manufactured time throughout the ages – working faster, traveling faster, communicating faster, eating faster, and in some cases, even dying faster.

The traditional time management that we have been promoting over the years has been focusing on this man-created time with its built-in sense of urgency and quest for speed.

Holistic time management, on the other hand, focuses on ourselves and how we might best maneuver in this God-created medium called time so as to maximize our accomplishments – not in terms of quantity – but in terms of their impact on ourselves and the world around us.

We all have a purpose for living, and that purpose is not simply to get through life as quickly as possible. But it’s hard to determine our “reason for being” when we’re always racing to meet deadlines. Take that “pause that refreshes”, and examine what it is that you should really be doing in order to experience a longer, healthier, happier, self- fulfilling life.

Harold Taylor is a bestselling author and time management expert. (www.taylorintime.com).