Are you Wasting or Creating Time?
Happy New Year! We have achieved our goals for 2021.
It’s a New Year filled with New Opportunities. Whatever your goals are for 2021, think about the obstacles that may prevent you from achieving them and what you can do about them.
In the last blog, How to accomplish what you want in 5 simple steps , we alluded to the idea that TIME is a mental construct. When you are doing some things, time seems to fly and when you’re doing other things, time seems to crawl.
What causes this? Its all about how you feel about what you’re doing. Your feelings are important as they are the fuel for your actions. Many believe, that is enough to explain their actions or lack of actions, but you you decide how you feel by what you think and you can attract into your life that you want by the energy you exude, since energy attracts like energy and everything is energy, including your thoughts and your feelings.
Procrastination
Procrastination is the act of delaying or postponing a task(s). We often procrastinate because we “don’t feel like doing it” When working with some of my clients, here are some things we uncovered as the reasons for procrastination
- They want to get “it” perfect
- They have a lot of time left
- They don’t want to fail
- They don’t want to be judged
- They keep getting distracted
What we realize is that when we have a deadline, we work faster because the pressure of completion becomes greater than the desire to do perfect work.
What to do
When you find yourself in the horrible cycle of procrastination, consider deliberately creating a short time-frame for yourself and work fast to complete it ahead of time. You will discover that there isn’t room to feel stress or distracted when you are working fast nor is there time to produce “perfect” A+ work. B- will do. A+ is only in your mind anyway and better to have complete work than no work. The other thing to notice is that when you procrastinate, you spend a lot of time thinking about what you need to do and how you’re not doing it which causes stress.
Time Wasters
This was a term I grew up hearing my Dad use regularly and refers to spending time on activities that are either unnecessary or unproductive. Think about activities that waste your time, activities that end up costing you your time and decide today, what do you want to eliminate. When you remove time wasting activities, you create more time for you to use in a deliberate way. Here are some time wasters that many people use their time doing.
- Worrying – is based in negativity and pretends to be important but in fact adds no value.
- Being confused – pretends to be action while it really means staying stuck
- Being overwhelmed – this always leads to inaction
- Being indecisive – ultimately means taking no action and choosing to stay stuck instead of making a decision and moving forward.
- People Pleasing – saying yes to others in the hope of getting them to like you (controlling others) and saying no to yourself
- Regretting – staying stuck in the past and costing yourself the present. Learn and move on.
Time Creators
Here are some things you can start doing to create time, things, that if done consistently and deliberately will result in you achieving all your goals and having time to do everything you want to do personally and professionally.
- Make decisions and take massive action – Making decisions is the best way to determine if it’s the right decision so make decisions decisively and follow it with massive actions until you realize your results
- Plan and honour your plan – Plan what you want to do and put in your calendar all the steps to doing it including the timeframe to completing each step. Make this non-negotiable which means that you will follow the plan even if you don’t feel like doing it at the time.
- Be willing to fail and fail – This is such a great time saver. No need to get stuck because of indecision. It will either work or not and is the best way to discover what doesn’t work, learn and move on.
- Say no – Being willing to say no to others frees you up to saying yes to yourself and honouring your plans. Additionally, taking responsibility for yourself and how you feel without taking on the responsibility of how others feel. Oh what a feeling!
Imagine what your life will be like if you eliminate the Time Wasters and Adapt the Time Creators. Your life will be transformed.
I’m thrilled to offer
Do More, Stress Less,
a 6 weeks course on Time Management.
Sign up NOW. I can help you to manage your TIME, change your perspective on TIME and have YOUR most productive year EVER.
I’m Nadine Seaga and I’m a life and leadership coach, Founder & Chief Energy Officer (CEO) of People Development Consultants.
Visit my website at pdconsults.com for more information.