The Impossibility of Time Management

I am not one of those people who take on new endeavors or face new challenges without doing plenty of research. I just can’t allow myself to face something new without having all of the information. Not only do I read any book I can get my hands on, but I take notes in the margin, transfer those notes to a spiral bound notebook and read again.

Most, if not all, of these personal or business “well-being and development” books devote a very generous amount of pages to Time management. So much, in fact, that I have come to loathe the term. What does Time Management mean, anyway? Can we really manage time? Control it? I don’t know a single person who can. So, isn’t Time Management really more about managing ourselves – our priorities? Absolutely.

One of the things that I discovered as stay-at-home mom was that I was busy and bored at the same time. I was exhausted at the end of the day from doing nothing…and by nothing I mean, running errands, driving to activities and play-dates, preparing meals and cleaning them up, wiping little noses, changing diapers, playing super-heroes and so on. But at the end of the day, I couldn’t even have told you what I did. And it started to upset me so much that I became self-deprecating – almost convincing myself I wasn’t really contributing to my family – that I was leaving no real legacy for my children – that I had nothing to show for my 35 years. Intellectually, of course, I knew that was totally incorrect. I am very close with my parents and sisters, I am educated, I had a successful career teaching, I have a wonderful marriage, a loyal and close-knit circle of friends and three healthy, happy children. However, I didn’t feel like I could break myself out of this rut. Who has the time?

There’s that word again. Time. Time Management. I can’t control how much time I have, I can only control what I do with the time I’ve been given. So, I began to re-evaluate my day-to-day life. I began replacing the “urgent” with the “important”. The laundry sat unfolded, so I could volunteer my son’s school. The phone calls and emails waited so I could get involved in a charitable organization. The other stuff eventually got done and I actually figured out a way to re-organize myself so that I could launch BlueLoop – something that I am very passionate about. Granted, it hasn’t been easy. Sometimes I still get caught up in the things that can wait. It has taken a lot of soul searching, personal initiative and some serious planning. But it has been an interesting journey – this process of Self Management – and at least I’ve found the time.