Do you feel in control of your time? I think I can help you!
25 years ago I recognised that I was very inefficient at managing my time despite the fact I had been heading up a research team in Rehabilitation Engineering for 15 years. I had never heard the expression ‘Time Management’ and started to pray about how to improve. God sent a wonderful solution in the form of a visitor from the USA who told me about, and sent me an audio course on, the Insight Time Management System (sadly, I can find no current reference to this).
Had God answered my prayer?
When I received this course I had to make a decision – was this God’s answer or not?’ I decided to believe it was and followed the System to the letter. This has significantly changed my life and effectiveness. I thank God for that chance meeting and this visitor’s faithfulness in following through the brief discussion we had. This was the only time I met him!
As I talk to people I find that my experience is very common – Time Management is a major challenge for many people. I hear statements like ‘there never seem to be enough hours in the day’ and ‘I just don’t seem to have time to do such-and-such’.
There is hope!
What I shall try to do over this series is to share my experience and give some very practical and fool-proof ways of managing your diary on a daily basis. I shall not be addressing issues such as life goals and longer term planning related to them in any depth, vital as these subjects are. However, through this series I want to help you in your day to day life. If you follow what I teach I can promise you that you will considerably increase your effectiveness and sense of being in control of your daily activities. First, I would like you to watch this video. Click on picture.
Follow the rules
From this video you can see that we shall be looking at such practical matters as planning and setting priorities. These may be relatively familiar concepts to you or you may find them foreign. Whichever is true let me urge you to pay close and diligent attention to what I shall write and follow it rigorously.
Once you have embraced the principles into your thinking you can make your own adjustments – but only then. If you make changes to the ‘how tos’ too early eg ‘Nigel’s needs are different from mine so I will adopt only part of what he says’, you will miss out! So don’t do it! And don’t get discouraged. Some say it takes 6 months to embrace a habit and, at first, it will not only feel like hard work but you may even have a short season of lower effectiveness (though I doubt it).
But I do encourage you to persevere – you will not regret it!