disorganized, or neat and efficient. Time management and personal
efficiency skills are disciplines that we learn and develop with practice and
repetition. If we have developed bad time management habits, we can
unlearn them. We can replace them with good habits over time.
3. Self Limiting Beliefs
The third mental barrier to good time management skills is a negative self-
concept or what are called, “self-limiting beliefs.” Many people believe that
they don’t have the ability to be good at time management. They often
believe that it is an inborn part of their background or heritage. But there is
no gene or chromosome for poor time management, or good time
management, for that matter. Nobody is born with a genetic deficiency in
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personal organization. Your personal behaviors are very much under your
own control.
Here is an example to prove that most of what you do is determined by your
level of motivation and desire in that area. Imagine that someone were to
offer you a million dollars to manage your time superbly for the next 30
days. Imagine that an efficiency expert was going to follow you around with
a clipboard and a video camera for one month. After 30 days, if you had
used your time efficiently and well, working on your highest priorities all
day, every day, you would receive a prize of one million dollars. How
efficient would you be over the next 30 days?
The fact is that, with sufficient motivation (one million dollars!), you would
be one of the most efficient, effective, best-organized and focused people in
the world. The best news is that after one full month of practicing the very
best time management skills you know, you would have developed habits of
high productivity and top performance that would last you the rest of your
life.
You Are Free to Choose
Time management behaviors are very much a matter of choice. You choose
to be efficient or you choose to be disorganized. You choose to focus and
concentrate on your highest-value tasks, or you choose to spend your time
on activities that contribute little value to your life. And you are always free
to choose.
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The starting point of overcoming your previous programming, and
eliminating the mental blocks to time management, is for you to make a
clear, unequivocal decision to become absolutely excellent at the way you
use your time minute-by-minute and hour-by-hour. You must decide, right
here and now, that you are going to become an expert in time management.
Your aim should be to manage your time so well that people look up to you
and use you as a role model for their own work habits.
Program Yourself for Effectiveness and Efficiency
There are several mental techniques that you can use to program yourself for
peak performance.
1. Positive Self Talk
The first of these methods for programming your subconscious mind is
“positive self-talk,” or the use of positive affirmations. These are commands
that you pass from your conscious mind to your subconscious mind.
Affirmations are statements that you either say out loud or say to yourself
with the emotion and enthusiasm that drives the words into your
subconscious mind as new operating instructions. Here are some examples
of affirmative commands that you can use to improve your time
management skills.
Begin by repeating over and over to yourself, “I am excellent at time
management! I am excellent at time management!” Any command repeated
over and over again in a spirit of faith, acceptance and belief, will eventually
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be accepted by your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind will then
organize your words, actions and feelings to be consistent with these new
commands.
You can continually repeat, “I am always punctual for my appointments! I
am always punctual for my appointments!” You can create your own mental
commands, such as “I am well organized!” or “I concentrate easily on my
highest pay-off tasks!” My favorite time management affirmation is to
repeat continually, “I use my time well. I use my time well. I use my time
well.” When you repeat these words over and over, with emphasis, they are
eventually accepted by your subconscious mind. You will then find that your
external behaviors will start to reflect your internal programming.
2. Visualize Yourself as Highly Efficient
The second technique that you can use to program your subconscious mind
is visualization. Your subconscious mind is most immediately influenced by
mental pictures. In self-image psychology, the person you see is the person
you will be. Begin to see yourself as well organized, efficient and effective.
Recall and recreate memories and pictures of yourself when you were
performing at your best. Think of a time when you were working efficiently
and effectively, and getting through an enormous amount of work. Play this
picture of yourself over and over again on the screen of your mind.
In athletic training, this is called “mental rehearsal.” This requires practicing
and rehearsing in your mind before you actually engage in the physical
action. The more relaxed you are when you visualize yourself performing at
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your best, the more rapidly this command is accepted by your subconscious
mind and becomes a part of your thinking and acting later on.
The Practice of Mental Rehearsal
The method is simple. First, you sit or lie in a quiet place where you can be
completely alone in the silence. You then imagine yourself going through an
important upcoming experience, such as a meeting, a presentation, a
negotiation or even a date. As you sit or lie completely relaxed, create a
picture of the coming event and see it unfolding perfectly in every respect.
See yourself as calm, positive, happy and in complete control. See the other
people doing and saying exactly what you would want them to do if the
situation was perfect. Then, breathe deeply, relax and just let it go, as if you
had sent off an order and the delivery is guaranteed, exactly as you
visualized it.
The best time to practice mental rehearsal is at night in bed, just before you
fall asleep. The last thing you do before you doze off is to imagine yourself
performing at your best the following day. You will be amazed at how often
the upcoming event or experience happens exactly as you imagined it.
In becoming excellent at time management, practice mental rehearsal by
continually seeing yourself as you would be if you were one of the best
organized and most efficient people you could imagine. Eventually these
pictures will “lock in.” When they do, you will find yourself easily and
automatically using your time efficiently and well in everything you do.
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3. Act the Part
The third mental technique you can use to program your subconscious mind
for efficiency and effectiveness is to act the part of a highly efficient person.
Imagine that you have been selected for a role in a movie or stage play. In
this role, you are to act the part of a person who is extremely well organized
in every respect. As you go through your daily life, imagine you are an actor
who is playing this part, who is already very good at time management. Act
is if you are already using your time efficiently and well.
Pretend that you are an expert in personal efficiency. Fake it until you make
it. When you pretend that you are excellent in time management, eventually
the action, which is under your direct control, will develop the mindset or
the belief in your subconscious mind that is consistent with it.
4. Benchmark against the Best
The fourth mental technique you can use for becoming a highly efficient
person is called “modeling.” Modeling requires you to pattern yourself after
someone you know who uses his or her time well. Think of someone you
admire for good time management skills. Use that person as your standard or
your model. Imagine what he or she would do in any given situation, and
then do it yourself.
Many of the most effective men and women in America reached their
positions by modeling themselves in their earlier years after someone who
was already extremely effective, someone whom they admired and respected
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for qualities they wanted to develop in themselves. Because of the Law of
Correspondence, you always tend to become on the inside what you most
admire in other people.
5. Become a Teacher
The fifth technique for programming your subconscious mind is to imagine
that you are going to be teaching a course in time management one year
from today. This technique comes from the discoveries in the field of
accelerated learning. What the experts have found is that if you think about
how you would teach new material at the same time you are learning the
new material, you seem to absorb it and internalize it far faster than if you
just thought about learning it and using it for yourself.
As you take in these new ideas on time management, think of how you
would teach them to someone else. Think of someone in your life who could
benefit from practicing what you are learning. Just as you become what you
think about, you also become what you teach. Just thinking about teaching
something to someone else increases the speed at which you learn it
yourself. And you always think about teaching those things that you most
want or need to learn for yourself.
One of the fastest ways to learn new ideas and techniques permanently is to
share them with other people immediately after you learn them. Each time
you come across a good idea in this book, take a few moments to share it
with someone nearby, either at home or at work. The concentration you
require to explain the new principle in your own words to another person
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seems to drive the information deeper into your subconscious mind where it
becomes a permanent part of your long-term memory.
6. Be a Role Model for Others
The sixth technique you can use to program your subconscious mind is to
imagine that others are looking up to you as an example of excellence in
time management. Imagine that you are setting the standard in your
company or your organization. Imagine that everyone is looking to you for
guidance on how they should plan and organize their own time. If others
were watching you, what would you do differently each day? How would
you behave in your daily work? How would you organize your time if you
felt that everyone was looking up at you to set the standard, to be the role
model?
When you see yourself as a model, an example of excellent performance,
you will always do better and accomplish more than if you just thought of
yourself as personally trying to be more efficient. The more you think about
yourself as an excellent time manager, the more excellent you become. The
more you see yourself as a role model for others, the better you become in
organizing your own time and life.
Your Self Esteem Determines Your Life
Perhaps the most important part of the psychology of time management, and
the role that your self-concept has in determining your performance and
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behavior, is the impact of your self-esteem in determining everything that
happens to you.
Most psychologists agree that self-esteem is the critical determinant of a
healthy personality. The best definition of self-esteem is, “how much you
like yourself.” When you like and respect yourself, you always perform and
behave better than if you did not. The more you like yourself, the more
confidence you have. The more you life yourself, the more efficient and
effective you are in each area of your life. Self-esteem is the key to peak
performance.
Your self-esteem is so important to your emotional health that almost
everything you do is aimed at either increasing your feelings of self-esteem
and personal value, or protecting it from being diminished by other people or
circumstances. Self-esteem, the feeling of liking and respecting yourself, is
the foundation principle of success and happiness. It is vital for you to feel
fully alive.
The Key to Peak Performance
The flip side of self-esteem is called “self-efficacy.” This is defined as how
effective you feel you are at doing or accomplishing a task or job. When you
feel that you are really good at something, you experience positive feelings
of self-efficacy.
One of the greatest discoveries in psychology was the discovery of the
connection between self-esteem and self-efficacy. Now we know that the
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more you life yourself, the better you do at almost anything you attempt.
And the better you do at something, the more you like yourself. Each feeds
on and reinforces the other. This finding is what makes time management so
important for every part of your life. The better you use your time, the more
you get done and the higher is your sense of self-efficacy. As a result, you
like yourself more, do even higher quality work, and get even more done.
Your whole life improves.
Three Self Esteem Builders
There are three additional factors that affect your self-esteem that have to do
with time management.
1. Determine Your Values
Living your life consistent with your deepest values is essential for you to
enjoy high self-esteem. People who are clear about what they believe in and
value, and who refuse to compromise their values like and respect
themselves far more than people who are unclear about what is really
important to them.
This immediately brings up the question, “How much do you value your
life?” People who truly value their lives are people who highly value
themselves. People who value themselves highly use their time well. They
know that their time is their life.
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The “Law of Reversibility,” says that feelings and actions interact on each
other. If you feel a certain way, you will act in a manner consistent you’re
your feeling. However, the reverse is also true. If you act in a certain way,
