Reverse time management

In my experience, one of the number one stressors for busy people is lack of time.

Trying to do too much in one day creates pressure, then frustration, as Bodymind warns you that you are getting overloaded, that your attention span is running down, and that you need a break. Keep ignoring the emotional warning signals and you will start to get symptomatic warning signals - fatigue, headaches, memory loss, immune system breakdown - that tell you that Bodymind cannot sustain the constant pursuit of those ever-receding deadlines.

Over the long term this constant drain on Bodymind resources leads to  fundamental changes in neurochemistry which shrink the hippocampus, which controls memory storage. As this starts to happen your ability to pay attention and finish tasks dwindles away until you reach burnout.

Invariably, if you advise people they need to slow down, they will tell you that no one else can do what they have to do. Telling them that the cemetery is full of indispensable people makes little difference, either.

If you are one of those people who cannot find a way to pass on the job to someone else then I recommend you get hold of Mark McGuinness's free Ebook 'Time Management for Creative People'. It is full of good advice on how to make more effective use of your time.

The book briefly summarises the ideas of Mark Forster, whose book 'Do It Tomorrow: and other secrets of time management' is excellent, as is his blog.

What I like about the 'Do It Tomorrow' approach is that it reverses the usual advice about time management. Keeping lists and to-do deadlines has never worked for me, and, as both Marks point out, it simply adds to the problem of managing time by giving you more chores to do.

Reverse Thinking, remember, reverses thinking traps and looks for creative solutions outside the box created for you by your assumptions. The elegant solution provided by Mark Forster is that you stop dealing with incoming work today and do it tomorrow instead. And when you have finished off yesterday's work (today) you then have more time to go and do the important things in your life. Try it - it works!

Comments

[Mark McGuinness]

Thanks mate. I didn't make it explicit in the e-book but one of my aims was to introduce habits and systems to keep us in Bodymind in the present - e.g. if you write something down or put a reminder somewhere you'll come back to it when you need to, you don't need to use Headmind to remember to do it, and can focus on what you're doing right here, right now.