Time Management
Well, let's not kid around here. Your time is your life. Remember the dedication of the book?
[You didn't read it? Please read it now, OK?]
For all of you who believe you are going to die, on your tombstone your whole life-time is a simple little line: -. Your life is certainly not valuable to the stonecutter when he chisels it, and obviously not to the original dash designer: What the heck kind of dignity is there in a dash, anyway?
"Time deals gently only with those who take it gently."
—Anatole France
"Time makes more converts than reason."
—Thomas Paine
"In season, all is good."
—Sophocles
"That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet."
—Emily Dickenson
"As if you could kill time without injuring eternity."
—Henry David Thoreau
To be highly effective with time management one must know why one is going to do what is being contemplated. A mission statement does not exist to impress people. It is a guiding light, a meter stick to help you measure your possible future expenditures of energy. A mission statement is also a confidence builder in that you will always know when you are on the right track — a major stress-reliever in and of itself.
Discovering Your Life's Mission
If you do not know your mission, then your life will not be determined by you. Not to worry, people will, of course, find a use for you. But if you do not know your mission, you will adopt theirs since any purpose is better than no purpose. Unfortunately, this means that you will not feel very fulfilled and patterns of low self-esteem will surely permeate your life. Without a sense of mission you have only the alternatives of conformity or rebellion, neither of which is deeply satisfying.
There is an alternative to conformity or rebelliousness: Self-directedness. A self-directed person knows his or her own mission and does not look to other people for definition. Only through self-di-rectedness can fulfillment be found. The rebel and conformist are always plagued by profound questions about whether they are doing the right thing with their lives. The self-directed person is empowered and experiences certainty.
It is also extremely difficult to make any major decision in a meaningful way without knowing your mission. Compared to knowing what your mission is, all other decisions are trivial. Your purpose is not something that you achieve once and then you are finished; it is something you express continuously, giving meaning to goals throughout your life. Your mission puts your entire life into perspective.
If you do not know your mission, you can discover it by performing the following process.
If you had the power to make your world any way at all, how would you choose it to be? Reflect a few minutes, then write this down in 20 words or less, utilizing positive language entirely. Make List #1: 10 things you like about yourself in noun-based language. [my good looks; my speaking ability; my ability to memorize; etc.] From List #1 circle 3 or 4 that are the most significant about you. Make List #2: Ten activities you enjoy engaging in as an expression of the 3 or 4 things you listed above. These should be gerunds ending in -ing. [singing; debating with politicians; painting; cooking; presenting ideas; etc.] From List #2 circle 3 or 4 that can make the biggest contribution to making the world more like the ideal you described in Step One. Create your Mission by writing out the following sentence, filling in the blanks with the selection from List #1, then List #2, then your ideal world.
"My Mission is to use my , , and , by ing, ing, and ing so that: ." Polish your grammar until your statement makes good sense to you.
Don't worry if your Mission doesn't seem to exactly fit you at first. This is not unusual. It helps to do this every day for a week until you feel in your heart that "This is it!" Remember, this is an experience concerned with the trajectory of your life, so be willing to take your time and get it just right for you.
I strongly suggest you utilize this process for any important projects in which you decide to invest your energy. It will make your projects more meaningful, enjoyable, enthusiastic and effective because you will be clear about what you are doing and why. Most importantly, you will be at cause rather than at effect, which is how you were designed to be.
The mission statement is your true North on your life's compass, guiding you through meaninglessness, confusion, difficult decisions, and allocation of your valuable resources such as time, money, energy, emotions, and relationships.
One of my favorite stories about how a mission statement transformed someone's life was a friend of mine who was feeling somewhat depressed — had that blues "Just-what-am-I-going-to-do-with-my-life!" tone to it. I encouraged her to do the mission statement exercise and, although typically reluctant at first, she came up with this beauty:
My mission is to manifest peace, serenity and harmony in the world by filling spaces with gardening, cooking and creating beautiful things.
What is particularly interesting about this woman and her mission statement is that at first she took it as a very external activity-oriented guidance system. She dove into her activities with cookbooks and seed catalogs and all the tools thereof, only to discover that her new mission statement had a great deal of relevance for her thoughts as well. From that time on a lot of her "gardening" was internal self-examination such that the garden in the space between her ears also began to reflect the beauty, harmony and serenity of her mission statement.
As within, so without.
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