NOTE: If you missed the first part of this series, Secrets of Time Management, Pt. 1: Posture Power you can read it right here.
Time management… one of the top 3 major problems I regularly hear from clients. Whether you’re trying to lose weight, feeling overwhelmed with stress or struggling to balance work and personal life, it always seems like there are never enough hours in the day. Every second and every minute flies by and before you know it, it’s time to hit the hay – your “to do” list taunting you with all the things you didn’t manage to cross off.
Last time, I went into how fixing your posture is actually a major element in empowering yourself – a mind-body connection that puts you in a position of advantage against all the things that eat up those precious minutes.
This time, I’m going to talk about a major enemy of time management – something that is usually directly responsible for those frustrating wasted hours…
That enemy is perfection.
The Partnership of Perfection and Procrastination
First up: nobody is perfect. Nothing is ever perfect.
Because perfection is subjective.
When we’re planning, when we’re creating, when we’re completing our tasks each day… we often end up getting caught striving for perfection.
And as individuals, we’re our own harshest critics. We undermine our own confidence when we push for perfection – convincing ourselves that things aren’t right, that what we’ve done isn’t good enough, and doesn’t represent us as highly as we want.
The result is procrastination.
See, contrary to popular belief, procrastination isn’t usually caused by lack of inspiration or lack of planning. More commonly, it’s due to lack of confidence and an over-abundance of self-criticism. We talk ourselves down, slowly drain our energy and will for completing our tasks by believing and accepting that the perfection we’re looking for is just too far away.
As a result, the mind wanders… attention wavers… productivity slows down as we seek alternative activities to keep us occupied. We divert our own attention – because while we’re telling ourselves we’re not perfect enough, we also want to shut that little voice up by doing something else.
And then we strive for perfection in that, and keep going round and round and round. From one shiny object to the next. Wasting time.
The key to breaking this is conscious, imperfect action. It’s simple, but it takes consistent effort to truly get into the swing of it. Things don’t have to be perfect – just get them done.
Good enough is good enough!
Focus on shutting up that critical voice that keeps telling you things need to be perfect.
They really don’t – and they very rarely, if ever, are.
Now, this advice of course extends primarily to activities and side-projects in your personal life. While things are rarely perfect in any mode of life, when you’re taking care of your patients, offering advice and performing surgery, I am not advocating that you give less than 100% of your level best.
Every person you care for deserves the dignity of your best effort.
But I don’t need to tell you that, do I?
Good.
Imperfect action also extends to something else that often plagues those who struggle with time management: the “all or nothing” mindset.
Life Isn’t All or Nothing
You know what I mean. Let’s say you’ve blocked out an hour to complete a certain task, but the previous one over-runs by 20 minutes. If you’re the type of person who struggles with perfectionism, it’s likely you’ll start to stress out about it. Procrastination kicks in, and you justify wasting even more of that remaining time because you don’t have the time left to complete the task to what you consider a satisfactory standard.
It could be your daily workout – say you block 45 minutes to an hour for exercise, but you wind up stuck in traffic, caught at a meeting or juggling family business at home… and suddenly, that 45 minutes becomes an available 20.
What do you do? Probably blow it off, right? You tell yourself that if you can’t do your entire 45-minute routine, it’s just not worth doing.
But it most certainly is worth doing. Imperfect action is still a step forward. You still get the benefit of that 20 minutes of exercise – benefit you simply wouldn’t get if you decided to flop down in front of Netflix instead.
Life isn’t all or nothing – baby steps are still steps. The worst thing you can do is stand still.
So keep moving; stay conscious and take imperfect action instead of chasing unrealistic notions of perfection. Stick to it and you’ll find – over time – your time management will become much more refined because you have a more stable understanding of how long certain tasks and activities take for you to reach that “good enough” point.
Once you’ve done that, it’ll be much easier to break free from those cycles of procrastination and self-doubt – and you’ll see your days as full of productive potential… through the power of your third eye.
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