Still Trying To Get One More Thing Done Today?
“Make the state of your mind more important than what you
are doing.”
–Hugh Prather
My husband, David, and I had a little tiff yesterday. We trade
off making the meals and it was his turn to make dinner.
And, one of the changes we are working on is eating earlier
and taking a walk after dinner in the extended twilight. When
I noticed that it was time for dinner, I didn’t remember him
leaving the office to make dinner. Turns out he hadn’t - he
was busily trying to get ONE MORE THING done.
This is a classic example of the ongoing struggle with time.
Probably every one of you has more to do than time to do it.
We hurry. We rush. We are absolutely convinced we can do
more than one thing at a time. And, do in 5 minutes what
actually takes more like 30 minutes to do. Somehow, we
continually trick ourselves into believing that we can get it all
done.
There is nothing to do about time. Time marches on, as they
say. You can’t manage time; you can only manage yourself.
Everyone has the same amount of time in every day and, as
much as we want to speed up what we do in that amount to
time, there is always a limit. David is always wishing he was
The Flash but even The Flash can’t go fast enough to get
everything done.
Here are some things you may be doing in hope of getting
more time:
*Missing vacations - Because there’s not enough time to
stop working.
*Microwave your meals - Who can afford the time to really
cook when it’s so much quicker to just zap it?
*Choosing cut up frozen vegetables - Chopping that
broccoli is just plain tedious.
*Limping along on 6, 5, 4, or 3 hours of sleep - Who needs
repair and regeneration of the body, anyhow?
*Recess? - Get rid of it. Put those 5-year-olds to work
learning something for heaven’s sake!
*And using all that technology that’s suppose to save us
time - When not waiting on downloads, answering IMs or
sleeping with our beepers, that is.
And on and on.
Keeping up with the times can deceptively keep you from the
things you really want to do. Rather than being a victim of
time or having time be your taskmaster, you can begin to
look at how you can better manage yourself in relationship
to time.
Ultimately, you are the one who gets to choose what you do in each moment of time in each day. When you choose to do
something, you are simultaneously choosing not to do
many other things. That simple fact often escapes our
conscious recognition. So choose wisely.
When David chooses to get ONE MORE THING done, he is
also choosing to forget about our exercise and accept the
natural consequences of that choice. Which is me being
upset 
The first step to managing yourself in relationship to time is
to keep reminding yourself that you are in charge of your
actions. You can break the grip that ticking time has over
you. You can chose for yourself and stop getting caught up
in tyranny of the clock. You can manage yourself and give up
trying to manage time.
” You are in the driver’s seat of your life and can point your
life down any road you want to travel. You can go as fast or
as slow as you want to go … and you can change the road
you’re on at any time.”
–Jinger Heath
Mary Ann Copson is the creator of the Evenstar
Mood and Energy Management System for Women.
With Master’s Degrees in Human Development and in
Psychology and Counseling, Mary Ann is a Certified
Licensed Nutritionist, a Certified Holistic Health
Practitioner, a Brain Chemistry Profile Clinician, a
Professional Life Coach and Human Development
Consultant. For resources about reconnecting to your
natural rhythms through better management of your
physical, emotional, mental, psychological and spiritual
energy visit http://evenstaronline.com.
