Time management is the use of methods for efficient planning, execution and monitoring of activities, so that your master plan is optimally implemented with the time available to you.

Without an optimal time management your dreams remain unfulfilled. You get stuck in “If, then thinking”.Your dreams need the best possible time management for their realization.

 

Time management is just a technique

Attention: Time management is just a technique (see above) that plans and organizes what is at the top of your list. Time management can optimize your planning and help to monitor actions. However, your Outlook calendar does not give you an answer if your timetable makes sense. And certainly not if it fits the schedule of the people you care about. A time management that is not related to your master plan only organizes activities.

Is it often the case in everyday life that you don’t know what to do and what not to do? “Should I now say yes or no to this request, play with the children or go to the office?”

Behavioral researchers assume that we make up to 20,000 decisions per day. Big and small decisions. Why do we say “yes” and why “no”? What frame of reference do you use for your 20,000 decisions? First come, first serve? Who screams loudest gets the appointment?

Executives I meet are better organized than ever before. Everything’s synchronized. All information is available in real time at all locations. Meetings start punctually and end punctually. On the table there are meeting rules on how time can be managed even better.

They meet with the employees, very modern, on board. Sprints from one Srum meeting to the next. The organization is now trimmed to project management. Line and matrix are just too slow. “Nobody makes decisions,” I hear more than once a week.

 

Sprints

My non-word of the year 2018 was “Sprint”. A manager of an international company recently told me: “Everyone should sprint, but hardly anyone knows where and why.”

The chaos and the inability to make decisions are then countered by the “wise company bosses” with the same action – the “mission statement process”. “We must reaffirm our values. Everyone must understand the meaning of our company anew. The “why” has to come back to the forefront.” And they’re right.

 

The sprint in life

Many people feel the way companies are doing. You sprint from one place to the next. The question of why you sprint and where you sprint to must first be brought into focus. The master plan is the ongoing, dynamic model process of our lives. It challenges us to think about the “why”, the “how” and the “what”.

You are right when you say here: “Not everything in life runs as planned by us. Life unexpectedly confronts me with tasks I have never wished for.” Blows of fate throw us back to the foundations of our lives. Happy is who has these foundations, because on this “base plate” we can rebuild.

 

Five crucial questions

Are you ready for this? Let’s go: Five crucial questions connect the meaning of your life with the activities, the time management of your everyday life:

 

  1. First of all, why on earth are you in this world?

When do you want to schedule time to think about this question of all questions? Maybe you’d like to spend a few days in a monastery, on the Way of St. James, or in another inspiring place.

Time management starts here: Take your calendar and enter a time to answer this question. Believe me, it takes time! Until you have answered this question, your time management will always be driven by actions.

Rad: World bestseller by Rick Warren: http://purposedriven.com/books/pdlbook/

 

  1. Which life dreams would you like to fulfill?

When you have tracked down the meaning of your life, then go one step further and answer the next question on that cognition:

Which three to five life dreams would you like to have fulfilled by the end of your life?

Do your dreams harmonize with the meaning of your life (see above)?

Write down your dreams, talk about them with your partner and friends. Visualize your dreams so that they remain alive in your thoughts. Your time management needs this emotional counterpart of images. Without sense there is no strength in the implementation!

As a Christian I deleted the term “impossible” from my vocabulary. The Bible (Luke 18:27) says, “What is impossible for men is possible for God.” If my master plan seeks agreement with God’s master plan, I can hope for completely different powers than my own.

 

  1. Which big wishes and goals would you like to achieve in the next 7 years?

You now have certainty about the meaning of your life and the dreams it contains.

In our perception, dreams of life are often far away. Now break down your life dreams into “7 Year Goals”. What could you have achieved together with the people you love at the end of the next seven years to get a big step closer to your life dreams?

This step is crucial for dreams to become reality.

A “7 year goal” is like a hinge that connects your life goal with the practical possibilities of the present. It divides your wishes and dreams into feasible stages. You believe in realization. You feel that you can achieve the big goals of your life with the right priorities.

Set a date now and describe your goals for the next seven years!

 

  1. What are your goals for this year?

If you’ve made it this far, I can only congratulate you. Very few people can do that. Many people shy away from the confrontation with these great questions of life. They are so full of appointments that there is simply no time left for this clarification.

What now comes is “only” the management of the goals in connection with your time, thus the actual time management.

You have a picture of what you want to achieve with your life in the next seven years.

Now it’s about you setting yourself goals for the year that are realistic, feasible and motivating.

 

An example:

Life-dream: To enjoy my retirement as an entrepreneur with my wife and children and to have travelled all over the world.

7 Annual target: In 2026, I sold the company to my son Michael, who declared this to be his career target.

Target for 2019: Michael has completed his studies in “International Marketing” by 31.12.2019 and holds the position of “Deputy Head of Marketing” in my company.

 

  1. Which are the most important measures in your week!

From now on it will be really practical! “Show me your weekly plan and I’ll show you if you can achieve your goals and dreams.”

In the last 25 years I have seen thousands of target sheets in companies. But in the end it is not the mission statements or the beautifully formulated goals that decide whether you reach your goal, although they are needed (see above).

Now it’s all about every single hour of the week. The question now is: Does your weekly plan, your diary, your Outlook calendar represent the absolutely most important measures to reach your goals?

Do you have your absolutely most important weekly goal clearly in mind? Have you designed your time slots of the day to do the urgent things?

Do you have a contact person, a boss or a team leader who helps you to distinguish one from the other?

Have you entered times for your marriage, family and friends in your weekly schedule?

Times for physical regeneration and fitness?

 

Remember, you didn’t just talk about your work in your  life dreams. The weekly plan is experiencing a resurrection these days.

 

  1. The decisive tip!

Maybe you just need this one tip:

Sit down every week, at a scheduled time with your boss and/or partner at the table and plan the next week as exactly as you can. Make sure that there is enough time for the important things in the weekly schedule. Do it every week, no exceptions. You feel how peace and serenity are coming into your life.

We live in a multi-option society. Amazon delivers everything in 24 hours. I have access to everyone and everything at all times.

Making the right decisions in the right time is what makes a time management professional.

The professional knows that every decision of the day fulfills the meaning of his life.

I wish you much joy with the conversion!