The Time Management Workbook

Spirituality/Personal Growth

The Time Management Workbook, a companion to Time Management: A Catholic Approach, provides directions and space to help organize your life according to your values. Included are practical exercises in: • Taking inventory of activities; • Listening for the still, small voice of God, over that of demanding time bandits; • Examining the amount of time spent on technology; • Planning for breaks and waits; • Re-thinking your way of living Sunday, the Lord’s Day. All with reference to Scripture and with the awareness that time, which is to say life, is a gift from God. Also available: Time Management: A Catholic Approach

by Marshall J. Cook 0-8198-7429-9 A practical guide that begins with the notion that God has given us exactly as much time as we need, so time management becomes a way of seeking a balanced, healthy Christian life.

“Marshall Cook presents a spiritual yet practical approach to the everyday challenges of time management. A must-read for all of us struggling to balance our busy, complicated, and often challenged lives.”

— Arthur Bowes Senior Vice President of Human Resources, North Shore Medical Center, Salem, MA, Management Professor, University of Massachusetts/Boston

$10.95 U.S.

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Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Part 1

Can We Really “Manage”Time Chapter 1

God’s Time and Our Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Chapter 2

Recovering from Speed Sickness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Chapter 3

Do You Really Need to “Manage” Time? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Part 2

How to Control Chronos Time Chapter 4

10 Truths, 10 Tips, and the Fundamental Law of Time Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Chapter 5

Moment Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Chapter 6

Eliminating Time Wasters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

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Chapter 7

To Do or Not to Do . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Chapter 8

Getting Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Chapter 9

Managing the Machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Chapter 10

Managing Information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Chapter 11

The Power of the Pause . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Chapter 12

Managing Other People’s Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Chapter 13

Clutter Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 Chapter 14

Honoring Thy Bodily Rhythms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 Chapter 15

Making Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Part 3

Keeping the Sabbath Holy

Chapter 16

The Holy Day of Opportunity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Conclusion

Living on God’s Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

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Chapter 5

Moment Management t’s time to reclaim daily decisions you may be making by rote— without even realizing you have choices.Take your time with this; it’s best if you spread it out over several days.

I

Day of Decision Every time you’re in an either/or situation, you have to make a choice. If you could have done something else or done it in a different way, you decided to do what you did in the way that you did it.

How many of these decisions do you make each day? Twenty-five?

Fifty? Maybe even 100?

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What if you count the relatively trivial decisions, such as: Either: I leave for work right now (and leave myself a nice cushion to be sure I get there on time without having to rush).

Or: I have another cup of coffee and finish reading the paper (and then have to catch a tailwind and make all the traffic lights to get to work on time).

You might make two hundred or three hundred such decisions every day.

Let’s find out. Select a typical day (as much as any day can truly be “typical” or “average”). Take a time-out at noon and write down all the decisions you remember making since you got up that morning. Include as many as you can. Remember, if you could have done something else or done it differently, it’s a decision. Do the same thing after dinner, listing all your decisions since noon.

The Morning’s Decisions

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The Afternoon’s Decisions

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Set your list aside until the next day.

When you review your list, are you surprised by the number and types of decisions you remember making? How many of them didn’t feel like decisions at all but were simply what you’ve always done?

If you want to make this tougher but more inclusive, take a notebook with you wherever you go for a day and write down your decisions as you make them (perhaps every thirty minutes, as you did with your activity log). This can get awfully annoying, and you may find yourself becoming self-conscious about your actions.You might even alter the way you act. Remember, it’s just for a day, and the data you collect could help you make time management decisions later.

The still, small voice Your life may resemble a carnival at times, with barkers shouting at you from both sides. You’ve got “barkers” on the broadcast media, e-mail, and phone solicitations who make incessant demands on your time and money. If you’re taking care of children, they need nearly constant attention and vigilance.

Your children need and deserve that attention. The carnival barkers don’t.

Create a list of people who regularly demand your attention but don’t merit it. It’s your list, and nobody else ever has to see it, so feel free to include your brother-in-law, a neighbor, a coworker— anyone who qualifies. Let’s call these folks your:

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Time Bandits

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You’ve no doubt developed strategies for fending off some of these assaults on your time and sanity.

Now think about people who deserve your attention but aren’t getting it.These may be the silent ones. For example:

The friend who never initiates a phone call (too shy, perhaps, or hates the telephone) but who wants and needs to talk to you.

The student who sits with hands folded on her desk, never gives you any trouble, and seems to understand the lesson.

The colleague who has been unusually quiet and withdrawn lately.

The silent young man holding the plastic cup on the street corner who may need a kind word or even just a nod more than any spare change you might give him

Do you have people like that in your life? Maybe you have enough of them to warrant making a list.

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The Quiet Ones

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Their silence might represent the still, small voice of God in your life, offering an opportunity to love and serve, even calling you into relationship. Do you have time for these quiet ones? Should making time for some of them become one of your time-management priorities?

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