The Happy Rock’s Addendum to the Unmanaged Time Laws

So you thought we were done talking about the tip offs that our time is probably not being used as wisely as possible……………not so fast.

Here are the Happy Rock’s additions :

Unmanaged Time Flows Towards Immediate Gratification

This one isn’t as ugly as it sounds. I noticed that in those times when life was piling up and I had a multiple stressful tasks that needed to be done, I would often gravitate towards inane tasks. If I had a 10 page paper, a test to study for, and a big life decision to make, I would feel compelled to reorganize my bookshelf(something I might do every few years). I suspect that part of it was avoiding the stress and hard work, but deep done I think I wanted to ‘excel’ and complete in something I had complete control over. The darker side of this one is watching yourself fall into the same habits over and over again when there are lots of things that needs to be done. For me it was withdrawal from people, and video games. They could be even more destructive than that, but hopefully we each know what our struggles are.

Unmanaged Time Flows Through The Path Of Least Resistance

Just hikers tend towards the easiest path around a mountain, our use of time will flow towards the easiest path. I would often find myself with free time, but unable to think of something worthwhile to do. I would then waste a few hours watching the TV or surfing the net until bedtime. As I close my eyes to enter dreamland, I would be flooded with the bills I could have paid, or the person I wanted to call, or the wash(Yes, I said wash not laundry. I think it is a Philly thing) I wanted to do. I had no plan for what tasks were important to me and how I would accomplish them. My mind was quite eager to aid and abet by conveniently forgetting any tasks of real value. I think the appropriate example would be when we forget to give dinner the proper forethought. Instead taking just a few minutes each day toensure we can eat a healthy balanced meal, we peruse the cabinets, each some potato chips, grab a soda, and then order a cheese steak from the local pizza shop.

The point is that is if we see any of these six behaviors patterns then we are probably in need of a tweak or overhaul to our time management system. We need to reevaluate how we record, process, prioritize, and plan our time. Ultimately we want to be making decisions that get us closer to the most important goals in life.

-The Happy Rock