You've Mind Mapped and Gotten Things Done. You have a Blackberry and 7 Highly Effective Habits. When you feel sassy, you kick it old school with Post It notes and a hand written To Do List and you still can't make that time management stuff work out in actual life the way it looks on paper!

What's the problem?! Is it you?

Possibly. Planning is a favorite self-sabotage technique of many a would-be successfully self-employed person.

However, it may be that you are using the right tool in the wrong way.

But first, a distinction:

There is a difference between ACTIVITY and ACTION.

Planning is an activity. It makes you feel like you have done something. Activity is the shallow stuff. Reorganizing your files. Making new folders. Cleaning your closet. Reorganizing your inventory. Reading e-mails and surfing (Yeah, I know, it's "research".).

It isn't that activities of this nature are bad, but it is important to remember these are not foundation setting ACTIONS. Actions are meaty. They get you somewhere. They represent actual movement, integrated, results oriented, "you are now in a different place on the path" movement.

It's important to understand this distinction so you don't ask your new planning software or system to do for you what it cannot. And what it will do for YOU may be different than what it will do for ME because we may have different organizational needs. We may be using our planning efforts to achieve different goals.

For example, some people fall into excessive planning when they are afraid of stepping out. They don't feel ready, legitimate or fully prepared to embrace their new venture publicly. This is the "let me just read one more book" person, always on the verge of being ready.

Some people think that thinking IS doing. They also confuse things like revenue and profit. There is a gap between the internal picture and the external reality and often it's a blind spot. This is one place where coaches are particularly effective resources.

Some people make goals out of fear. I used to do that. Oh, Andy has a blog? I'd better get one! Andrea has a book? I'd better start writing! Oh, Alice told me I need to read this book? Must get over to Amazon. Micheal is teaching classes? Guess I should add that to my offerings, too. What's this? No way can I make a living only doing 1:1 coaching? (Even though I have been for 6 years!). Oh no! I have to make a bunch of passive revenue streams! I was basically taking every good idea that I saw,and accepting every prediction for my business by people who didn't know me as true and adding to my own list because I thought I had to model my success after every one else. Coaches are notorious for this, but I see other self-employed people doing the same thing. In fact, Americans in general can be prone to this. Oh, Oprah said I need to do these 10 things for a happy life? Put 'em on the list. And, summer is coming...let me get those thinner thighs while I'm at it.

This is YOUR list, first and foremost. What do YOU want out of life? How are the goals you are setting and the plans you are making relating to your values? Are you setting goals based on your assessment of what you know to be true for you or on what others are telling you that you will have to do to "win the game"? What is the game, exactly? How are you defining success?

When you have a handle on THEN progress to these questions about organizational aids: What are you trying to organize and what function does writing things down serve for you? Does it calm you down? Help you focus? Get you to do things? Help you identify where you need help or guidance?

Some folks start using tools and systems before they really have identified their need for them. It's not that different from buying kitchen gadgets. Everyone needs an apple corer and lemon zester, right? And muffin tins. And how about wrist watches? Have to have one, right? Well, I haven't owned one in YEARS. YEARS AND YEARS. Every place I go, including my car, is full of time pieces. Sometimes we assume we need things just because they are so common.

Let your need guide your hand here.

As a recovered time organizing flunkee, let me share some insights with you that have made all the difference in the world for me:

What I have come to understand now is that I am a visual organizer. I think through my fingers and all those pretty markers and graph lines (I'm an old school organizer) help my brain with conceptualization of my goals. I have a serious freedom jones, however, so I know that putting down a formal to do list is the kiss of death for me. I need the field defined, but not each stepping stone. Sometimes I want to walk on the grass, or cut through the brush. Sometimes I LIKE learning things the hard way because once I've learned something, I KNOW I've got it.

Even when I thought I had a doable 'to do list' that wasn't soul crushing, the fact is that when I am on the right path there is so much synchronicity that happens that I HAVE to abandon my original plans to accomodate the better opportunities that come along that I had no idea were going to show up.

What does this mean for time management?

For me, doing my conceptual work on paper includes asking myself the basic question WHY? Why is this on the paper?

Once I know the WHY, what I find I need is a flow chart and a general sense of my calendar. Spring and fall will NEVER be times for big projects. I have an acre of perennial gardens. I can't redo my website when the weeds start to come up or I'll regret it all summer long. I always take a week with my husband to celebrate our anniversary, so June is out for major projects, as well. February and March, however, are dead times in Chicago...what a great time for marrying myself to my computer, redoing my website, tweaking my infrastructure and writing book chapters! The fact is, I have about 6 dedicated weeks a year (without scheduled clients, home/garden demands or vacations) to devote to big projects. That's it. Suddenly a year, which seems so long, becomes much more concrete to me when I really look at the flow of the predictable demands.

Remember: there will always be unpredictable demands. My parents both had major health crisis in the last 4 months. Welcome to middle age, baby. Better leave some wiggle room.

When you align yourself with the larger rhythms of your life and the natural world (like my garden seasons) and have a sense of your values, you will become a much better gatekeeper where your goals and projects are concerned.

Better gatekeeper means less organizing to do. Make friends with the concept of time and it's limits. Time management is NOT about making more of it. It's not about turning yourself in to an efficient robot that never wastes a moment. It's about learning to flow within the time that is available and recognizing that it is a limited resource. It's about making friends with it.

Time is a non-renewable resource. So are you.

Laura Young, M.A. is a life and business coach and owner of Wellspring Coaching. She is a contributing author to A Guide to Getting It:Purpose and Passion, Become Your Own Great and Powerful and A Guide to Getting It: Creative Intelligence, due out Spring 2006. Laura specializes in working with individuals facing midlife transitions (personal and career), self-employed individuals on business development strategies and high level leaders on communication and leadership skills. With doctoral training in counseling psychology, Laura has written extensively on such topics as stress management, motivation, finding one's life purpose, achieving life balance, cultivating a healthy lifestyle and improving communication in personal and professional relationships. Please visit her blogs and website to tap in to her extensive resource base.