jim@millikenproject.com

207-808-8878 Our book "Life is a Project: How are you managing?" is available!


Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Busting the Ghost in Our Days

Too busy.
Too much to do.
Too little time.
Workload overload.
“Hey, how ya doin’?”
“Busy . . . You?”
“Yeah, busy. Too busy.”

What’s this “busy” that everybody is? Is it work, real work? Is it important work? Worthwhile work? Is it the right work?

Ask yourself what was the most important thing you accomplished last month. Or last week. Or yesterday. What made it the most important?

Equally serious questions: What was the second-most-important thing you did yesterday? How long did it take? And the third? How long did it take, and why did it take that long?

In fact, what exactly did you do all day? And what about the stuff you didn’t do, maybe didn’t get to, that you had planned to work on?

Who has time to think about all that, much less figure out answers? Anyway, we may have no idea where to start.

And therein lies the problem: We don’t have time to manage our time.

Well, why is that?

As with any chicken-egg situation, this one just plain discourages examination. It frustrates decision.

That doesn’t mean we just become unaware of the issue. It hangs around. It is a ghostly presence in our days – this feeling of dissatisfaction with our own behavior because we can’t seem to get ourselves to accomplish what we want.

We all know we’re supposed to be doing something about it, but we don’t. Why?

Two main reasons:

First, we don’t really know how, even if we think we do.

Second, we don’t really want to do it, even if we think we do.

So that’s where you start: Finding motivation and getting practical.