How Often Do You Water Your Daisy? About Time Management
Often, when we encounter a daisy, we think the typical “Does he love me? Don’t you love me?” to “find out” if another person is interested in us. However, instead of thinking about someone else, think about yourself and ask yourself: Do I love myself or don’t I love myself? Am I worrying about loving myself? Am I managing my time well to cultivate myself and feel satisfied with what I do?
We have had to live in an era that advances rapidly and forces us to live quickly and even with stress, as if we were on “autopilot” when it comes to doing things and it will not cost us much effort to perform routine tasks such as driving. , going to and from work, etc. We live so fast that we spend the day ritualizing habits and, in the end, our brain automates them.
But What happens if we do the same with our own lives, with our relationships, with our purposes? What happens when we wake up and go to bed doing the same things, without having surpassed ourselves, without having achieved a goal, without rethinking anything, without looking at where we really want to go, what we want to do or who we want to be?
Going on autopilot can take us away from those things that are truly important to us. If we spend too many hours at our job, we may not dedicate enough time to our relationship, our friendships, or ourselves.
It is true that it is becoming increasingly difficult to find time to think beyond our daily lives and implement life projects that exceed daily responsibilities. However, if this occurs it is possible that you are not managing your time properly and you are neglecting certain things that are also important to you. Once we learn to manage it, we will have much more awareness and much more control over our lives and, as a consequence, we will feel more satisfied and self-fulfilled.
What is life? Time (+ space)
Ask yourself if everything you are doing today is getting you closer to where you want to be tomorrow. Ask yourself if you are devoting enough time to things that are important to you, to your vital priorities.
To do this, I invite you to do the following exercise. Take paper and pencil and draw a daisy. The daisy is you, so on each of the petals write the important areas of your life (family, professional, etc.) and think about what you would like to improve in each of them. Based on this, set goals. If this seems like too much to begin with, start with those areas that you are neglecting and that are most important to you.
Think about what resources you need and determine small objectives, that is, the steps you will have to take to reach said goal. The difference between goal and objective lies in the fact that the goal is the destination we want to reach, and the objectives are small actions that help us achieve it.
For example, if I want to improve my English, I could set as a goal: “Pass the C1 exam in January 2019” and as objectives: (1) Study English for one hour each day, (2) Attend language exchange tandems, (3) Every time you watch a series, do it in English.
It is important that the objectives are personalized and achievable. There is no point in setting very ambitious goals if we are not going to meet them. They must also be measurable, since it is preferable to set the goal of “going to the gym three days a week” than “doing sports regularly.”
Once you have your goals, plan your day or week and establish priorities. Not all activities are equally urgent or important, so prioritizing becomes a key aspect of managing your time.
Other important aspects to take into account when managing your daily time so that you can meet the proposed objectives are:
