Overcome Resistance and Improve Your Time Management

Overcome Resistance and Improve Your Time Management

What do you think of when you hear the words “time management”? Do you think of writing out lists, or booking appointments into your diary in an effort to feel more organised, or maybe it makes you feel overwhelmed because you have so much to do?

On the other hand, perhaps you have time management licked! Maybe you’re a ninja and get through your tasks and appointments with a smile on your face and dinner on the table!

This post is for people who find themselves overwhelmed or baffled by the idea of time management. For whatever reason, managing your time has become a daily effort, one in which you feel that you fall short, even though you seem to be busy all day.

The effort of trying to keep on top of your workload is wearing you down and tending to your own needs has become a distant memory.

What Time Management Is and Isn’t

The concept of time management is misleading. I’m not the first to say that we can’t actually manage time. Time just is. It passes steadily through the days and weeks regardless of what we choose to do during those minutes and hours.

And again, as others have said, in an effort to manage time, what we actually need to address is ourselves. In other words, to get the most benefit out of the passing of time, we must manage ourselves effectively. Ugh!

So what exactly does that mean – to manage ourselves effectively?

That’s what this post will attempt to answer. But let me just say right here and now. Knowledge and understanding of more effective personal time management is just the start. Putting it into practice and regularly following through is much, much harder. And that’s where the gold dust lies and what I’m going to try to address here.

Choosing Your Tasks

Surely choosing which tasks you’ll do today is as simple as knowing what needs to get done, yes? Well, not quite. We’re often not that objective about the tasks we choose on any particular day, preferring to do tasks that are the easiest or most familiar or most demanded by others. You’re probably familiar with this, particularly the last example.

So, if this is your method for choosing your tasks, and you’re still reading this post, then there’s a good chance that that isn’t really working out for you right now.

Instead, you still feel overwhelmed, dissatisfied, frazzled and unfulfilled.

As I’ve already mentioned above, addressing this situation can be challenging, because to really make a difference, you’ll need to look inside rather than look for external causes. You’ll also need to make changes to your behaviour that will feel uncomfortable. Furthermore there will be a ripple effect which could cause you to upset some people who don’t like your new modus operandi!

What Are You Resisting?

This is a big question that has a huge effect on your ability to manage yourself and therefore manage your time. What’s more, the things you resist are usually the things that are holding you back.

So, by addressing your resistance to a task and working through it, you’ll make big strides forward which will make you happier and increase your self-esteem and confidence.

That’s a big claim, I know, but there’s only one way to find out if I’m telling the truth and that’s to give it a go.

So, let’s explore 4 reasons why you might be resisting a task and what you can do about it.

You Don’t Know How To Do It

Question: did you go to school? Sorry, I know that’s a bit dumb, but seriously, you went to school to learn all the things you’d need to know to embark on a career and be a contributing member of society.

At no point before you entered school, or each new class or each new school year was there any expectation that you would already have sufficient knowledge to give this stage a miss and jump straight onto the next level.

No, you were only expected to learn. Furthermore, you were to use that time to learn, to absorb, to practice and to learn some more.

So why do you now feel so much resistance to learning this new task? Only you can answer that question, but here are a few thoughts:

• You’re all grown up now and you should have all the answers…err really?!
• You had a bad experience of learning something in the past where you just couldn’t get your head around it. Well, maybe it was the teacher, maybe you hated the subject or found it boring or maybe you failed it as a subject in school. But hey, that was years ago. Things have moved on, you’ve moved on, you’re not that (little) person any more.
• You haven’t got the time…more on this one below…

By all means take some time to find out what’s going on in your head, but don’t get hung up on it to the extent that you delay further!

Instead, give yourself the gift of learning, as you would to your children or your friend’s children…Your brain loves to learn when you given the opportunity. Treat it as you would mandatory training in work or other similar environment. It needs to be done, so set the time aside and enjoy the process.

You’d Rather Be or Need To Be Doing Something Else

Ah! Wouldn’t we all?!

There will always be other things to do. Some of those things will be hobbies and pastimes that we enjoy indulging in, but never really give ourselves the time to really enjoy (but that’s a post for another day).

But, the chances are, the other thing you’d rather be doing will be something you’re at ease with. You do it regularly and you can do it well. It could be as simple as cleaning the kitchen, emptying the tumble dryer or making the beds.

And once these tasks are done, there will be more of them, because, as you know, these tasks are just ways to avoid doing the thing you should be doing.

Of course, the story you’re telling yourself is that you don’t actually have enough time to do that task, because your life would fall apart if the basics weren’t done. Well really? Is that actually true?

Afraid not. Yes, things might get a little messier round here for a few hours, but other than that, no real damage. If you don’t believe me, picture a time when you were ill and couldn’t do your ‘basic’ tasks. Did the place fall apart so much that you never caught up again? Thought not.

So once agin this comes back to the need to manage yourself effectively, and then the time management will take care of itself.

My method for dealing with the lure of household or low grade tasks over getting on with the important but challenging stuff? Simple – I use a cut off time. Every day. I have a list of routine tasks that, if done will keep the place ticking over. Once my time is up, I stop and then get settled into the task.

This works for me because I feel a sense of calm that routine things aren’t clamouring outside my office door, at least for a few hours. Try it. Don’t expect it to be easy at first, but keep with it, because it is an effective time- and self- management technique.

You Think It’ll Take Too Much Time

Ask yourself this question: am I eventually going to do this task or not? Your answer must be either YES or NO and nothing else!

Don’t faff, don’t overthink or analyse. Is it YES or NO?

If you’ve answered No, then stop getting hung up on the task. Take it off your list and move on. Don’t worry about it ever again.

Chances are though that you’ve answered Yes, otherwise you wouldn’t still be here.

So let’s get frank with this. When (because it’s no longer an ‘if’) you do this task, it now doesn’t really matter how long it’s going to take because you’re committed to doing it.

And if this is true – which it is – if you’re still delaying, stalling, resisting or otherwise offering up excuses, then the amount of time it’ll take isn’t the real problem for you. It’s one of the others here (or something else, dig deep and work it out!).

If, however you are worried about the amount of time you’ll need to set aside, either initially, as in “I need a whole day to really get to grips with this” or “it’ll take me months to finish this and I’ll have lost my customers/my mind/my social life/my job by then, so I just can’t start it”, then it’s time to get over yourself!

Two things to consider here…

No one ever has huge chunks of time…

…unless they’re on a beach somewhere sipping their favourite tipple!

So you’ll need to effectively utilise the time slots you have. Again, this comes right back to managing yourself. Pick a time slot to work on the task – it can be as little as 5 minutes if you’re really resistant – and make sure you follow through.

No excuses, just commit and do.

Repeat this process regularly, increasing the time as you go along. The more of the task you get done, the more you will want to get done and before you know it, you’ll be wanting to finish the task and will find the time you need. Try it.

The time will pass anyway

When did you actually add this task to your to do list or start thinking that you needed to do it? A few hours ago? Days? Weeks…months ago…?!! (I’ll stop there, but could it be years?!)

And, if you’d already applied yourself, could you have at least made some progress?

Exactly.

Other People Are Demanding Your Time

As I’ve been writing this, my phone has pinged. Sound familiar? Now I could choose to ignore it (for now, after all, I am busy), but do you notice that these minor interruptions just draw your focus away?

And that’s just a simple interruption. There are of course much bigger demands on our time from others. At home the children need your attention and your partner wants to spend time with you. The dog needs a walk and the phone is ringing but no one is picking it up!

Work is the same, just substitute family members for colleagues and you’ve got the picture.

Of course there are certain people who have the ‘right’ to interrupt you at certain times and in certain circumstances. Your boss might be one, your spouse and your children are others. But barring an emergency, no one has the right to interrupt you at all times of the day and night.

The question therefore becomes, how interruptable are you?

• Do you use interruptions as a reason, err, excuse to not get on with the task? Does that momentary disruption allow you to throw in the towel for the day because you just can’t concentrate “with all these interruptions”?

• Or maybe you’re unable to bat away minor interruptions for fear of offending someone? This one is a personal boundaries issue and no doubt affects many parts of your life, not just your challenges to manage your time effectively.

People will interrupt and disturb you to the extent that they feel they’re going to get a response. Turn down or ignore the interruption often enough and people will start leaving you alone. You’ll no longer be a source for their ‘entertainment’ and they will go to someone else who’s more willing.

So hopefully you can now see that this is a self management (resistance) issue rather than time management.

Conclusion

I’m not going to pretend that becoming better at managing your time by managing yourself and your resistance issues is easy. It’s not. It requires a concerted, daily effort to stay on top on yourself by questioning your habitual behaviours and how they’re affecting your daily life and more importantly, your aspirations.

But as with any type of improvement, self-knowledge is priceless and is the starting point for any meaningful change.

When you find the root of your personal resistance, don’t waste (more) time beating yourself up. Instead get some help through self-help books, courses, an accountability partner or a coach who can support your through the transition and moving your life onward to reaching your goals!

What to do next…

> Read another post – How To Manage Time Effectively Over The Holidays
> Join my free private FB Group – Click now to join my closed (private) Facebook Group
> Catch up with me on social media – Facebook, YouTube, Twitter or Pinterest
> Sign up below 👇 for my weekly newsletter, keep up-to-date and get special offers!