Time Management 'from the inside out'

 

Time management should make your life easier, not harder. This approach to time management shows you how wellbeing is the foundation for greater productivity and not an optional extra. 

This is the first book I published on Amazon. It was a while ago and doesn't reflect my thinking today, so I thought I would publish it here on Steemit and ask for thoughts and comments that I can use to produce an updated version.

So please comment below, I'll upload in a few parts.

Here is part 1:

 

Preface 

This is not a book of tips and techniques. It is about how our underlying experience of life comes from our flow of thoughts and that effective time management comes from insight into how state of mind affects our ability to manage our productivity. 

In a nutshell it is about the relationship between state of mind and productivity. 

Books on time management often have a couple of similar points. One is that you have exactly as much time in your day as the most famous and successful person you admire. This never really helped me. As an example, I read recently about how a successful author pushed her book up the Amazon charts. She lost me a few words in when she said, “…I was retired so I was able to spend 14 hour days promoting my book.” 

Well, shucks… Retired or not, I am not going to spend 14 hours a day doing anything. I am just not going to. So it occurred to me that part of time management was about what you are willing to do with the time you have. 

And let’s take stress and guilt right out of the equation. You and I and everyone else on the planet do what we do and then we die. That is just how the system works. Some of the things we set out to do will happen and some of them won’t. We can be fully engaged in what we set out to do without being to invested in it. There is an old Judo saying to the effect, ‘hold on tightly and let go lightly’. 

So much of time management is choosing what you want to show up for and how much effort you are willing to invest. Other aspects include increasing your productivity by reducing the mental noise to signal ratio so, for example we just get into the habit of closing our email when we are engaged in writing a book! On another level we become more comfortable with the passing flow of thoughts and feelings and take ourselves a little more lightly. 

If you have any comments or questions please put them in a comment to this article and please remember to upvote it.

Thank you.

Part 2 will follow in a few days.

Best wishes,

Richard