The Quality of My Relationship with Time Influences My Health and Life Purpose

Poor time management leads to stress. It scatters my thoughts and emotions in all directions. Stress affects my ability to make decisions, or to make the right ones. Stress messes with my head. It’s difficult to concentrate when I’m stressed, making it hard to stop scattered thoughts from overflowing into my life. They tend to create chaos, especially in those areas of life that are really important to me.

Health, relationships, work, obligations, and money suffer when they are subject to poor time management. Poor time management skills are largely responsible for self-sabotage. Poor time management also sabotage others. Worse still, poor time management allows others to sabotage me. Good time management skills create self-empowerment. It puts me in charge of my life and my health.

Time can be a rich resource to own. When I don’t have enough time, I’ve realised it is possible to create more of it. Some people think of filling in time, or spending time, and even killing time. Why would I kill off a valuable resource? At best, this is the fast track to boredom, lethargy and procrastination. It reduces motivation and drains my will power. Killing time has the power to drain my life force.

I try to think of time as a resource that can be utilise. When I appreciate time, I look for ways to use time in a more appropriate way.  When I honour time, it means I’m making the most of it, instead of wasting it. I make time work for me rather than against me. It allow me to master time, which helps me to master my energy.

It’s easy to take time for granted. Here’s how I do that:

1. Doing too much by taking on too many responsibilities
2. Saying yes when I need to say no
3. Always taking care of others and forgetting to take care of me
4. Making a simple task complex
5. Getting overwhelmed by doing too many things that are urgent but not important
6. Wasting time by doing things that are not important and not urgent
7. Not defining my objectives
8. Not setting goals
9. Setting unrealistic goals
10. Setting unspecific goals
11. Setting goals that lack quantity
12. Setting goals that lack quality
13. Setting goals that lack personal purpose or meaning
14. Setting goals without steps, stages and phases mapped out on a realistic time line.
15. Not making the complex task simple by breaking it apart and working on one piece at a time
16. Not working out priorities
17. Not scheduling my priorities
18. Not visualising the outcome
19. Lack of direction
20. Forgetting my purpose for the day
21. Forgetting my life’s mission
22. Forgetting the vision I have for my goals
23. Forgetting the personal values that drive my actions
24. Forgetting to remind myself about why I am doing what I’m doing
25. Failing to prepare for failure
26. Not having a plan
27. Double standards and lack of congruency
28. Not sticking to my plan
29. Getting side tracked by those who are off track
30. Lack of focus or concentration
31. Applying critical thinking when creative thinking is required
32. Applying creative thinking when critical thinking is required
33. Choosing the wrong role for the task
34. Dwelling on the past
35. Worrying too much about the future
36. Not identify mistakes
37. Not learning from past mistakes
38. Not acknowledging your personal weaknesses
39. Trying to deny the existence of a problem
40. Avoiding necessary confrontation
41. Gossiping
42. Refusing to delegate
43. Narrow mindedness
44. Inability to make the most of a situation
45. Inability to turn a weakness into a strength
46. Not embracing or utilising personal strengths
47. Ignoring evidence-based successes
48. Paying too much attention to too many details
49. Not clarifying the big picture
50. Not reflecting on what worked at the end of each task, or at the end of day

Time that lacks purpose, or does not have enough personal meaning is unfulfilling. This means my life overall will be much less fulfilling. My relationship with time can enhance or detract from the quality of my life. Developing a healthy relationship with time is one way to reduce stress and increase fulfilment. Better time management skills take practise. I do it by correcting each time management mistake, one at a time, tracking my progress by using the list above, and checking off each one as I master it. Until I decided to manage time better, it was almost impossible to manage my energy. My ability to manage my life and health improved when I realised I needed to love, honour and respect time.