Knowing what you want is a skill that takes practise
Last week someone asked me to talk about the book AND deliver two useful tips about Time Management in four minutes. I took slightly more than four (!) but this is roughly what I said…
Everything in life that is not the way you want it can be resolved in to one of two problems:
- You know what you want but don’t know how to get it.
- You don’t know what you want.
The secret to time management is not a better system, that’s kindergarten stuff. The secret to time management is that it is actually about attention management. I’m willing to bet that you’ve never failed to go on holiday – if you are clear about what you pay attention to then most of the time you get it.
The first tip is learning that it’s all about what you pay attention to. And the way to learn that is to be clear about what you want. When you are clear about that, then your time management problems fall away. What you need is a way of learning to find and listen to your inner compass. Hence the book.
The second secret is that focus is about saying no. You’re a bright person and you could do almost anything. You have to choose. It’s about saying no, no, no, no, no so that your way is clear to pay attention to the thing you want to pay attention to. And that’s going to upset some people who would rather that you paid attention to their thing.
There are plenty of guides to help you get what you want; it’s all out there on the interweb. There is very little to help you figure out what you want in the first place.
I then went on to tell the story I use in the intro…
If you’d like the option of twelve very different experiments to help you get to grips with what you really want then you should buy a copy today.
