The End of Time Management

A Tick Tock Tuesday post

I’ve been reading Timothy Ferris’s book The Four Hour Work Week again. I’ve already skimmed through it once. Yes, I said skimmed. It’s this weird thing I do with all books and magazines. I like to speed read through them once and then if it’s something I really liked, I’ll sit down and really read it.

Anyway, in this book he has a chapter entitled “The End of Time Management“ and it has really started changing the way I look at this thing called time management. Here’s an excerpt from the book:

Just a few words on time management: Forget all about it. In the strictest sense, you shouldn’t be trying to do more in each day, trying to fill every second with a work fidget of some type. It took me a long time to figure this out. I used to be very fond of the results-by-volume approach.

Being busy is most often used as a guise for avoiding the few critically important but uncomfortable actions. The options are almost limitless for creating “busyness”: You could call a few hundred unqualified sales leads, reorganize your Outlook contacts, walk across the office to request documents you don’t really need, or fuss with your BlackBerry for a few hours when you should be priorotizing.”

What’s your first reaction when you read that? Agree or disagree?

I’ll admit it. I am one that LOVES to check things off a list and yes, I am busy. I work from home, I have 3 kids and I am a wife. I volunteer at church, at school and at my kids’ extra curiculur activities. In fact, I have something going on every night this week. Yes, that is abnormal for us, but it just so happens to be one of those weeks.

The end of time management? When I first read that line I think I actually laughed out loud. But them I started really taking a look at my day and seeing what I was filling it with. Am I filling it with stuff that matters, really matters or am I filling it with busy work?

I think that we as a society thrive on “looking” busy. If you don’t look busy, well then you are just down right lazy and that’s all there is to it, right? If you are always in a rush, always on the phone, always headed out the door, always in demand, then by golly, you must be a succesful person.

Well, I have decided to slow things down a bit. How do I plan on doing this? First off, by reading Tim’s book again and applying his principles. I am really going to start prioritizing things in my life. I’m wiping my hands of this “looking busy” all the time stuff. I’m done with it!

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Coming Soon…Home & Dining’s Fall Harvest Scavenger Hunt. Stay tuned for details.