02/05/2019
LifeBItes: “What’s an efficient thing I could do now?”
Today, we are going to talk about caring enough. Many people who claim to have poor time-management skills have an underlying problem: They don’t believe it’s worth the effort to manage their time better.
Ironically, managing time well is key to improving your life enough to feel it's worth the effort. If you’re unemployed, it could well be, at least in part, because you’ve managed your time on the job poorly, whether playing on the Net on company time, taking sick days when not sick, or being inefficient in how you tackled work tasks. If you have poor relationships, it might be because you spent too much time with people not worthy of your time and too little with better ones. So, ongoing, ask yourself, “What’s an efficient thing I could do now?” That can be crucial to improving your life, including your motivation to even better manage your time — Success breeds more success.
Another reason that people don’t care to manage time well is that they feel it won’t make enough of a difference to others. The impact even of presidents is limited, but life’s meaning resides primarily in making as big a difference as we can within our sphere of influence. For a person with a small sphere, that can be as basic as being kind to as many people as possible when you feel it’s worth the effort. For other people, it might be working long hours using their best skills in the service of making the biggest difference. Note, that this needn't mean helping people with the greatest deficit. The good time manager focuses on helping people with greater potential to profit or on tasks that build or disseminate worthy products or services.
*Psychology Today - Marty Nemko Ph.D.