Spending Time


By Guest Author 

Diana Lindstrom, PMP, CTACC


Time is the only coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.   --Carl Sandburg



I was exasperated!
I just couldn’t get the project completed. Not enough hours in a day. Not enough days in a week. Have you ever felt frustrated like this?

Most people experience these frustrations at some point in their lives. As Carl Sandburg said, most of us don’t use our time effectively.

Instead of talking about time as coins, most of the world uses a common phrase to discuss this – time management. But we can not possibly manage time. To manage anything means that we have control over it. No human being has any control over time – at least not yet.

What we can control are our priorities. What is the single most important thing in your life? That’s your highest priority. You’ll focus all your attention, creativity, and energy on that thing. Other things become unimportant to you. Nothing can take you away from this thing.

Think about this most important thing now. Write about it. Draw it. Mind map it. Create a plan for spending you coins of time.

Pick just one important thing, you say. Many things are important to you. Your family’s important, as well as your business. Don’t forget spiritual growth. Anything else?

How do you prioritize one of these valuable areas over any other? You don’t.

This is where you create a schedule. It’s how you’ll manage your priorities.

Please don’t get frightened now – it’s not as hard as most of us make it. Depending on what you need to do, you make your schedule work for you.

Some people work better with a loose schedule. That means that they block out periods of time to work on their priorities. Lets say that you want to work on your business and your family. You block out a period of time for your business – maybe during school hours. It’s important to focus on your task and nothing else.

Other people work better with a tight schedule. That means that they schedule every activity down to the minute – or quarter of an hour. For people who do this, care must be taken to schedule “down” time – time to think and create. It’s important to not get too rigid with your schedule.

So how are you going to spend your coins of time?

Diana Lindstrom, PMP, CTACC, is the founder and owner of Los Lobos Consulting, LLC. Her website/blog is http://shipwreckedproject.com. Diana coaches executives, project managers, and business owners who want to figure out their priorities and learn how to manage them. If you’d like to know more about Diana, please visit her blog.