In Search Of The 25th Hour

There just are not enough hours in the day. How often do we find ourselves mumbling that under our breath? But still, no matter how you slice it, we only get 24 each day. That is 1,440 minutes. Or 86,400 seconds. When you look at it that way, it doesn’t seem so unreasonable.

Here is the plain truth about “time management.” There is no such thing. You cannot manage time. We can’t take five minutes and coax them into six. Time is fixed and, as the famous saying goes, it waits for no one. We really must face the fact that it isn’t time we need to manage, it’s what we pack into the 1,440 minutes we count on being granted every day.

If we were going on a trip and could only fit so much into our suitcase, we would think carefully about what is most important to pack and what we can comfortably leave behind. Packing ten pairs of shoes, no matter how amazing they look, won’t do us much good if we neglect to bring some clothes to cover the top half of our body!

As we travel through each day, shouldn’t what we pack into our limited time be given at least as much consideration? And if so, how do we do accomplish that and feel good about our choices?
Rather than starting with calendars, schedules, and sticky-notes as tools for managing our busy lives in hopes of finding that all-important balance, we might find help grounded in values-based priority setting. In a nutshell, this is the idea>>