We each only get 24 hours per day. None of us knows how many days that we will get. However, it is dangerous to live our lives feeling like there is never enough time. The scarcity mindset is destructive. It causes us to live in fear and a constant state of want. The desire for more time causes us to suffer, because there will never be enough time.
What if, instead, we chose to see that there is always enough time. Always enough time for all of the most important things in your life.
There is a famous video where Stephen Covey does an exercise with a woman to illustrate his “big rocks” concept. In the video, he gives her a transparent container (representing her life) filled partially with a bunch of pebbles (representing the everyday unimportant things that fill our days), and asks her to take a series of big rocks and get them into the container. Each big rock signifies something important in her life: family, rest, career priorities etc. She tries and tries, but she cannot get all the big rocks in, and the tension amplifies as it becomes clear that she does not want to leave any outside the container (her life).
At that point, he offers her another way to proceed. She can start from an empty container. She quickly fills the container with the big rocks, and pours the pebbles (other smaller priorities) into the container between the big rocks.
The marvelous lesson being that you must put the most important things into your day first in order to ensure there is room for them.
But wait… that is only the most obvious lesson. There is a second, equally powerful I believe, lesson in this exercise. When the woman ends the exercise, the big rocks AND the pebbles are in the vessel (her life). In other words, what if there really is always enough time if we choose to see it?
In my estimation, this is the true lesson of time management. You are expansive. You can do far more than you think that you can do. How? Well:
- Put the “big rocks” in your life first; ensure that every day your big rocks go at the top of your prioritized daily task list or calendar.
- Work that prioritized daily task list. Do not let the phone ringing or the next email you receive set your priorities. You can add things to your list or change the priorities based on new inputs. However, you must work based on your priorities.
- Love what you do / choose to love what you do. Note: It is a choice. People that choose to love what they do are drawn to get that next big rock tackled. They more frequently find themselves in a state of flow where productivity is at its peak.
“Commitment is a statement of “what is”. From this perspective, you can know your commitments by your results, not by what you say your commitments are. We are all committed. We are all producing results. Conscious leaders own their commitments by owning their results.”- The Conscious Leadership Institute
Just my opinion. What do you think? Let me know in the comments.
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