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Your Time is Yours!
By
Mimi Donaldson
Your time is your own. The 24 hours in your day belong to you—no one else.
With your busy schedule, and all the priorities
competing for your time—including the priorities of others—it takes skill
and practice to retain control of those 24 hours
and keep them yours. You must be deliberate about protecting it from
potential time-wasters who interrupt and demand your
time. Let’s discuss two of them: crises that are” externally initiated,”
i.e. initiated by other people and situations; and
procrastination, which is” internally initiated,” i.e. by you. Of course,
we’ll save procrastination for last …
“Crisis” is defined as” an unexpected interruption of major impact, above
and beyond the normal day’s events, requiring
immediate response.” Makes you nervous just to read it, doesn’t it? The
problem is not the definition. The problem is that
we label events” crises” that are not crises at all, and then we throw up
for grabs our priorities and run off to handle the
supposed” crises.” Examples: The supervisor who labels” crisis” the report due every Friday. Not a
crisis. The tip-off? Every Friday is expected, so
it’s not a crisis.
A salesperson late for a sales meeting because she stopped to handle
someone else’s crisis. Not a crisis. It did not”
require” her immediate response. She chose to help someone and shoved
aside her own priority in the process.
All these people were duly stressed out, so they used the word” crisis” to
describe the panic they felt. But before you take
on something as a crisis and let it dictate your priorities, remember the
title of this article. And remember these simple
guidelines:
If it’s not your crisis, return it to its proper owner. Determine the priority in your life of the event you label” crisis. ”Do you respond or delegate? Plan for crisis. You can’t if they’re really unexpected, but very few
events are totally unexpected. You can plan to avoid
them or anticipate them.
A crisis planned is an event managed.
Positive Procrastination
Now for” procrastination.” The definition: “To put off intentionally and
habitually.” Nothing negative or panic stricken in
that one. It’s a positive word that’s gotten bad press. Even the prefix”
pro” is positive. Professional, proactive,
procreates, prolong, profess, and protrude -- all aggressive, positive
words that are quite deliberate.
“To put off intentionally” means you meant to put it off, and” habitually”
means you put it off more than once.
Procrastination is not the word of a helpless victim; yet we use it to
feel that way. We beat ourselves up for
procrastinating. However, when we look at it truthfully, we must admit
that the thing we procrastinate is usually something
we don’t want to do. Two actions are possible:
Cross it off your list and stop thinking you” should” do it or Delegate
it.
But what if it’s important to do it? What if it’s a priority? Break the
task down into smaller, doable tasks and do these.
Reward yourself after each one. For some of us, drawing a line through it
is satisfying enough; others must promise
themselves a coffee break. Be a proud procrastinator of the unimportant, unloved tasks. Put them off,
and stop beating yourself up about it. And stop
reacting in a panic mode to events you mistakenly label” crisis.”
Remember: Your time is yours. When you become a master of
your time, you become a master of your life.
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