Biggest Time Management Mistake
The biggest time management mistake you can ever make is
forgetting your closest partner in life. The one who stays with
you all the way from cradle to grave, every minute. The one who
drives you through your daily and nightly routines, who runs all
your habits. You want it or not, this partner of yours is the
real manager of most of your time. His name is Your Subconscious
Mind.
You and Your Subconscious Mind make one tightly bound team in
everything you do. Whatever big or small project you undertake,
you two depend critically on each other. And unless you both
work in the same direction, your team hardly makes any big
progress.
But how do you align those directions? Like in any team,
communication is the key. You need to communicate to Your
Subconscious Mind the specific target you want to hit and in
what time frame. Of course, you can take the lead and set the
direction to go. Yet, you still need to convince Your
Subconscious Mind to follow you in that direction and hit your
target.
The challenge is that Your Subconscious Mind has a stubborn and
inert personality. If you just tell him what to do, he does not
listen you well. He already has strong opinions about what you
should be doing instead. After all, he is the one who holds all
your beliefs that you absorbed throughout your life up to now.
And he has a comprehensive toolbox of routines and automatic
reactions to get you through your day.
But don't give up on this challenge. If you manage to convince
Your Subconscious Mind to drive you in the direction you want to
go, he has the power to make you unstoppable! The power that can
keep you on course through the storms of every day distractions
and interruptions.
But how? How do you convince Your Subconscious Mind to help you?
You need to learn how to communicate in the way he accepts and
understands. That special way of communication with Your
Subconscious Mind is what goal setting techniques and skills are
really all about.
While there are finer points that you can pick up in books or on
my site, here is the core essence of goal setting techniques as
a way of communicating with Your Subconscious Mind.
The most critical element of goal setting is WRITING your goals.
For a number of reasons, this writing process is absolutely
necessary for Your Subconscious Mind to take them seriously.
Writing is the basis of the communication. Anything less than a
clearly written goal will be discarded as unimportant noise.
Note that the goal writing process is a two way communication.
When you write your goal, if Your Subconscious Mind does not
accept that goal as reasonable, he will try block your hand
until you actually write something more realistic.
The second critical element is about the way you formulate the
goal when you write it. You want to get your point across to
Your Subconscious Mind most directly and effectively, in the
language he understands best. That's why you need to follow
certain rules of goal writing.
In particular, formulate your goal in present tense, as a
complete sentence that starts with "I". Make the goal as
measurable and specific as you can. Correct and rewrite it until
it is crystal clear.
Set a specific time frame. Set it by finishing your sentence
with a deadline that you honestly think you can meet.
Keep those notes in a safe place and come back to them often to
review and correct your written goals. Keep thinking about them
throughout your day.
Finally, take a few minutes right now and actually write down
three to five of your most desirable goals. Reconnect to that
important partner of yours and start communicating. Right now,
and from now on.