Macro Time Management

Macro Time Management
Efficiency is to no avail if you have no destination.

Macro time management looks at your use of time as a whole so your life objectives will be met, while micro time management examines and improves the way you perform specific tasks and activities. Micro Time Management is concerned with speeding up, getting more done in less time and increasing efficiency: but it does little to change what you do. Macro Time Management is more concerned with what you do in the time available. It assumes there is no shortage of time, only poor choices as to how we use it.

Here are the five main things you do in order to practice sound macro time management.

1. Think about your future. How do you visualize yourself spending the rest of your life? What are your dreams, goals and ambitions? Do you enjoy doing what you are doing now? Will you still enjoy it twenty years from now? What must have happened in order for you to say twenty years from now, “this is what I’ve always wanted to do with my life.”

2. Develop a mission statement. Once you know where you want to go, draw up a mission statement, a single sentence, if possible that outlining what it is you are going to do with the rest of your life. It defines your purpose.

3. Develop a set of personal policies, guidelines that will help you make decisions quickly and prevent you from being sidetracked. Personal policies might include such things as I will not compromise my beliefs or values in order to get ahead.

4. Set some long-range personal goals and start doing what you have to do in order to get there. That may include registering for some education courses, saving a percentage of your earnings, changing jobs, writing a book, taking flying lessons or any number of things.

5. Schedule time in your planner to work on your goals and protect that time from the demands of others.

It will take more than a messy desk or a disorganized file system to keep you from being where you want to be if you have a vision, a mission, specific goals, an active plan and the determination to succeed.