The
underlying core of my more than 2,000 Time Management presentations during the
last thirty years has been the concept of “balance.” Success in managing our
time has less to do with the tools available to us, such as “to do lists” and techniques
for delegation, as it have to do with achieving daily balance in our lives. If
we are not in balance to begin with, we are likely to sabotage our success.
Successful Time Management then has a lot to do with what we are not doing.
Our
lives are built on several legs, the Seven Vital Areas: Health, Family,
Financial, Intellectual, Social, Professional and Spiritual. If one is a little
longer than the rest, like a table, it will affect then entire table.
Life
can be cruel. You can lose in any of those areas overnight. Your health can go
away. Your money can be lost. Your family can leave you, all on a moment’s notice.
Not that we don’t do things to prevent that from happening, but the point is,
if one or two legs falters, you have others to hold you up.
It
takes three legs for a stool to stand. If you build your life around just one
or two legs or areas you first have a continual problem maintaining your
balance. Worse, if you lose those one or two legs of those remaining legs, you
collapse.
Here’s
my list of the seven best ways to get out of balance and become uni or duo
dimensional.
1.
Ignore Your Health. Don’t get the quantity and quality of sleep you
require. Don’t take time for exercise. Eat the wrong stuff. (90% of those who
join Health and Fitness Clubs today will stop going within the next 90 days.)
Your resistance level will be reduced and you will be susceptible to all the
latest sniffles and flues going around to ensure that you take advantage of all
the sick days you are allowed. 75% of all adult deaths are preventable. We are
literally driving ourselves to early grave in the “hurry-up, stressful” life of
ours.
It’s
interesting when someone gets a new car, they bring it in for the scheduled
maintenance, put the right grade of fuel in the tank, and keep it shiny and
clean. Our pets visit the veterinarian on a scheduled basis. In a recent study,
34% of the men surveyed said they would not go to doctor even if they were
experiencing chest pains.
2. Postpone
Family Time. They will always be there for you anyway when you get the time
for them. A student once asked me, “What is the best way to take my four year
old on vacation?” I replied, “You take her when she’s four years old.” Fifty
percent of marriages wind up in divorce court. Imagine, getting married at age
twenty-five and twenty years later, at age forty-five, you give up 50% of
everything you have worked for in your adult life in a property settlement in
divorce court. It’s like the squirrel, gathering the nuts, hoarding away while
someone is drilling a hole in the side of the tree to let all the nuts escape.
The squirrel is too busy to hear the impending threat. The average working
person spends less than two minutes per day in meaningful communication with
their spouse or “significant other” and less than thirty seconds per day in
meaningful communication with their children.
3.
Don’t Plan Your Financial Life. Be assured that your employer, and if
not, then the government, and if not, then maybe a kindly relative will take
care of your needs. Most people arrive at the end of life financially deficient
or dependant upon some type of assistance from the government or relatives.
Most people do not spend a little of their time, on a regular basis, to create
financial freedom and live their lives they way they “want to,” but rather do
what do because they “have to.” Eighty percent do not want to go to work on
Monday morning. Ninety-seven percent say that if they did achieve financial
independence, they would not continue with their current employer or in their
current line of work.
4.
Stay Away From Intellectual Development. You have the degree. You read
books at one time. Five percent of the population purchases ninety-five percent
of all the books. The other ninety-five purchase the other five percent of the
books. They don’t have time to read them. They give them away as gifts. You
barely have enough time to keep your head above water, what with work and other
interests. Coast with the knowledge you have. It’s draining away from you daily
but hopefully you filled the reservoir enough early on that it will carry you
through your life.
5.
Let Your Social Contacts Decide Your Future. Follow the advice of your
friends about what you should be doing in your life even if they are not in a
place where you would want to be. Be ever conscious of “What would my friends
say/think if I did…?.” Always seek out and act only with the approval of your
peers. Take comfort in the knowledge that when there is a void in leadership
your life on how you should be spending your time, someone else will fill that
void and tell you what to do.
6.
Let Your Professional Life Just Happen. Do not establish a lifetime plan
of where you want to go. Take whatever opportunity and advancement life gives
you and be satisfied. Don’t rock the boat. Seek the familiar and avoid the
strange. Play it safe. Make it comfortable. If you chose a career path when you
were eighteen or twenty years old, and now at age forty you are unhappy, don’t
consider a change. Hold on to that decision you made twenty years ago. It will
be like going to a twenty year old for career counseling.
7.
Avoid Spending Time In Your Spiritual Area. Not only in a formal
religious venue, but also in our relationships to others, our community, our
environment, and the universe. Leave those questions to others to ponder. “When
man forgets his Creator, his own creations will be turned upon him.”
