New Time Management

“The secret of success is constancy of purpose.”
  — Anonymous

I agree that, if one wants to achieve more, the most important tool for doing so in today’s world is time management. The challenge in dealing with an incessantly increasing demand on this scarcer commodity that we call time is prevalent in our society. People are busier than ever before and seem to never have enough time to do what they really want.

However, if you study truly successful men and women, you will recognize that they always seem to have lots of time. They live in the moment, are happy and love what they do, and are intrinsically very productive. Moreover, they have intense focused concentration on the task at hand and seem to manage their time almost instinctively. And they do so with passion, zest and fervor.

Everything seems to “flow” for these kinds of people. Why? I believe it is because they are congruent. Their inner selves and their outer selves are in tune with each other. What these successful people are telling you is that you must not look at trying to get more things done but at improving the quality of your life.

Concentrating solely on the future or dwelling on the past takes your present moments away from you. In other words, high levels of activity — let alone anxiety — can limit your potential.

So, there is more to time management than just being productive or trying to get as many things done as possible. There is a clear difference between purposefulness and productiveness.

Your potential is infinite and, therefore, there is no real limitation other than time itself. If you don’t agree, ask yourself: “Why do some people achieve their goals with so little effort while others struggle endlessly?” The answer lies not in the how but in the why. In other words, if you want to become successful, asking “why for” is more important than knowing “how to.”

As such, don’t search for how success can be achieved or a set of specific techniques that will succeed. Start by developing and clarifying the reasons why you want success in your life instead.

Find out what are the purposes in your life. And if you don’t know, then make that your purpose. While working harder does create more opportunities, working purposefully is like working smarter, for it makes it easier for you to recognize and seize those opportunities.

I’m not attempting to teach you some new time management method. To me, time management is just another way of making you work more and more — for nothing. In this book, you will be forced to look at time management in an entirely different way. I call it “present moment” management. I also refer to it as life management because it focuses on quality of life instead of quantity of time.

It’s the proper clarification of your innermost values (i.e., your priorities) and, contrary to the usual goal-setting process, to systematically convert them into activities. This way, you can discover and follow your priorities at all times. You will learn how to go from “set your goals and manage your time” to “drop your goals and manage your life.”

Confusion comes from the lack of clarity. Dr. Stephen Covey, in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, says that, “What is important and what is urgent get easily confused;” so confused, in fact, that what is urgent may seem like shortcuts to success when they actually are what I call “cornercuts.” Obviously, you can’t take a shortcut if you don’t know where you are to begin with.

Therefore, successfulness is to have definitive clarity. With a clear conscience, you can develop a clear purpose. Helen Keller once said that, “People have the wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness; it is not achieved through self-gratification but attained through fidelity to a worthy purpose.”

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