One of the reasons I feel like so many women are feeling overwhelmed, anxious, depressed is the perceived lack of control in their schedules/time management. Time management is such a stuffy word that appears to only apply itself in the corporate world. When I think of time management, I am thinking more along the lines of, how do you schedule your priorities? For many women, their calendar sort of runs them. We are slaves to what activity is next and by the demands of appointments on our calendars. What would happen if you took control of your time and scheduled your life around things that are important to you-your core values.
Aligning your schedule with your values
There are a few helpful steps to aligning your schedules with your core values:
- Take a look at last week’s blog on how to make a list of your core values!
- Take a look at your current life/calendar and highlight or note the activities that do and do not align with your list of core values. (Note: I understand there are some things we have to do and are out of our control. I would challenge you to think about those differently to see if they align or not. For instance, running my kids around to appointments does not bring me joy, but serving my family does!)
- Examine whether any of the activities that do not align with your core values can be eliminated from your schedule. Key word is “can”! You have to decide whether that makes sense or not for your family. I would also encourage you to evaluate this based on your own thoughts and feelings, not on the thoughts and opinions of others. Typically worrying about what other people think is how we lose control of our schedules in the first place. Our boss wants us to work more hours, our husband wants our kids in certain sports, all of the other children appear to be in multiple activities, our friends want us to go our every Saturday night making it difficult to wake up on Sunday morning for church.
- Then, look at your life/schedule and see if you have chunks of time, or even nooks and crannies, where you can fit in some of the things that are important to you. For example, if physical fitness it important to you, could you walk for 15 minutes on your lunch hour, or go in the evenings after dinner when your family is winding down, or before everyone wakes up or right after they go to bed. Sometimes we think we are too “busy” to fit in the priorities, but sometimes we just have to take an honest look at how much we are letting our calendar dictate our life.
- Finally, choose one thing this week to change, whether its an elimination or an addition from the list above. At the end of the week, take some time out to reflect on the difference it made in your week and on your mood. Then next week, do the same. Overtime, it is possible to begin to build a life centered around your priorities.
Watch our video on using core values to better time management:
https://youtu.be/ER4eVMNEUW4
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