The Biggest Time Management Mistake (and what to do about it)

The audience for this hub is quite specialised. I am writing this for you if you if you are a Healer, Therapist, a Heart Centered Practitioner, and you feel overwhelmed with running your own business, even though it is doing something that is really important to you. You would like to save time and make more money, but these seem contradictory.

It can be really frightening transitioning from employed work that is safe but not our 'purpose' to self employed work doing what is really important to us, and helping as many people as we can... but if we don't get the clients we can't pay our bills.

This can make us feel needy, which actually works against our efforts to share what we do with potential clients. When we come from neediness that is the energy that gets transmitted to potential clients, not what wonderful work we could do with them and the amazing benefits they would garner.

I am sure you can see for your self which of these two approaches would get a better response!

When you really understand what time management can do for you it puts you back in the flow of your own wisdom and then when you relate with clients and potential clients you are coming from your authentic desire to be of service, not just a needy whine for money!

So, time management is far more than overlaying your busy life with a priority system and a 2do list. The really only makes you more productively overwhelmed and stressed...for a while until you give up because it is a burden.

There are a host of time management systems out there and the biggest mistake in time management is to use a system to beat yourself with. Time management systems are not sticks to goad ourselves into ever more frenetic activity.

You may have tried a time management system. It probably worked for a short time and then you just couldn't sustain the enormous effort to keep it going. There is a reason for that. Time Management is not actually about time, it's about our thoughts.

Time management is not about managing time! No one can do that, it is not something that we can control. Identifying the most useful leverage point is crucial for getting yourself out of overwhelm and negative thoughts and feelings and back in to your own flow.

I am saying that the most useful leverage point is actually your thoughts. Being busy, feeling overwhelmed stressed and anxious are not about the world. It really, really, really appears that way because our thoughts and feelings are the only way that we know about the world; so for the most part, until we begin to become aware of the distinction, we think they are the same.

We experience the world and we experience time through our thoughts, which generate feelings. Our experience of time is one of the classes of thoughts that we have. It is not anymore, or any less real than a thought.

When we are thinking and feeling overwhelmed and in that kind of uncomfortable state of mind we will tend to make low quality decisions. When we are in a good, elevated state of mind we make better decisions and tend to feel more open, expansive, and in control.

The world did not change, we did.

So, if our thoughts create our reality, the more attention we give to cultivating our higher states of mind, the more naturally productive we will be.

Hopefully by now it makes more sense that the answer to organising your time is not, in the first instance, a time management system. If your focus is on your well-being, you will find yourself in much more positive states of mind, more often. Thus you will make far better decisions about how to manage your time, and you will feel far less overwhelmed.

Thus, when you do start to use a system, the focus is on using it to nurture your well being, not fit in extra work. When you actually make self-care your priority, you come back / get into a balance that allows you to move with what Michael Neill calls 'effortless success'. You are working but it doesn't feel like work. When you look after your well being you will naturally save time, have better conversations with clients and do better work with them. You will naturally be more productive.

I specialise in Time Management Coaching from this 'heart centered' perspective. Please leave your comments and questions. Answering questions is a really good way for the answerer to learn too!

Thank you and blessings along the way

Richard