How you can handle disruptions in your daily schedule

 Time management is about taking charge of oneself.  It is about accepting responsibility for our lives and what we choose to do with our time.  Perhaps you have no problem acknowledging that you are, in fact, in control of your time, but in real life practice you may find that this is a bit more difficult to accept. 

Every day life presents us with obstacles and issues that may conflict with our goals or with our schedules and it is easy to feel that you lack the control factor in all of this.  But regardless of what happens to you that may affect your time management goals, you are always responsible.

At this point your goal is to overcome these daily obstacles with an attitude of a consultant.  When you are faced with many choices of what decision to make, what path to turn to, or which way to handle a situation, pretend that you are a highly-paid consultant.  I'm not talking about consulting other people, the key here is to be a consultant to yourself.  When there is a decision to make that disrupts your daily schedule then ask yourself: “What does Mike have to do next?”  “What would be the best use of his time, right now, within the current situation?” 

By referring to yourself in the third person, you will be able to derive different answers for those that would come from thinking to yourself “What should I do next? How can I overcome this obstacle and still keep my time schedule intact?”  Instead, by asking yourself in the third person, you will automatically visualize yourself mentoring another person, and the advice given will not be based on fear of what can go wrong, but rather from a neutral mindset.

Going back to time management and making the right choices, let's quickly cover the subject of taking action once you have made your decision.  Again, once you have hit a roadblock in your daily schedule, quickly assess the situation and visualize yourself as the consultant. 

Then once you have come to the conclusion of what you need to to in order to rectify the problem, visualize then yourself quickly tending to the task at hand with vigor so that you can get back to your time schedule, and then do it!  Take action immediately.  Do not waste any thoughts wishing that you could be doing something else.  Do not curse the fact that  your daily planning is now off balance.  Simply follow through with the issue and get back on track ASAP.  Time management means to effectively handle surprise knocks in your daily schedule, not just handling the goals that you planned on paper the night before.