Stealing Time for Your Dream in 2025 - Part 4: Where Does the Time Go?
Where does the time go?
The nonproductive dreamer: "I don’t know where the timegoes.
Once your Mind’s Eye takes over: "It doesn’t goanywhere; time’s in your face all the time! It’s knowing what to do with itthat counts."
For me, keeping track of time started at Rockhurst HighSchool in Kansas City, where the Jesuits taught us to schedule our activitiesin precise Accountant segments. A page from the daily list I kept for fouryears looked like a space-launch checklist. Every single ten-minute period allday was chockfull of activities, starting from the moment of awakening to thelast minutes of making the next day’s list.
At the end of each daily agenda, which was written inpencil, was "tomorrow's to do list": At 10:50 P.M. I allowed myselfeight minutes to work on the next day’s agenda. All day I’d been jotting downnotes in pencil to remind me of things that had to be scheduled for the nextday. During the eight minutes at the end of the day, I created the agenda fornext day. All but one of the individual items on the daily agenda are items of"micro management" (defined as what to do on the Accountant's clockwhen—or “objectives”). The eight minutes at 10:50 P.M. are"macro-management" --considerably less than 1% of the time availableto me.
Though it served me well as a foundation for futureproductivity, it’s immediately obvious that an adult living in our newmillennium, in a life filled with interruptions and immediate demands, can’tlive sanely for long with this excessively disciplined approach. But accuratedescription precedes effective prescription.
For accurate consciousness of time-usage to arise, you musttake control one way or another. As years passed, I learned I had to move onfrom the severe but satisfying monastic time-management methods of my Jesuitagendas. I experimented with macro management techniques --what I call"the Gordian knot style of time management": Cut through the busynessby doing the important matters first, and letting everything else take care ofitself.
The most familiar macro tool is the to-do list. It’sexcellent for getting specific small objectives accomplished, but ultimatelyyou’ll want to move on because using the to-do list to control your life endsup wasting too much time. Yes, you get the important little things done. Butyou can’t write, “become an internationally recognized architect” on your to-dolist. The to-do list doesn’t motivate or inspire you because it doesn’t dealwith goals and dreams, only with objectives. That’s why even the shortest to-dolist often gets neglected, ignored, postponed, constantly "carriedover" from one day to the next. There’s a rebellion going on inside you.Accomplishing the list may satisfy your Accountant, but your Visionary islonging for more and feeling cheated.
I’ve developed two forms that can help you inventory youractual expenditure of time so that you can take charge of this most preciousasset and attach it firmly to your dream plan.
The Time Inventory Daily Work Sheet should be filled out atthe end of each day, estimating the number of hours you spend on the variousactivities in your life. The example that follows belongs to an imaginary dreamerwho wants to move from his day job as a bank teller to selling the nonfictionbook he’s writing.
When you’re filling out your own work sheet, don’t forgethousework, church and/or volunteer activities, phone time, etc. If thecategories here don’t sound right to you, alter them to suit your own life andactivities. Don’t add up the totals beneath or to the right until the week isover. But at the end of the week, add them up. Our bank teller came up with 201hours. Ninety percent of my career management students and clients end up withweekly audits far under or considerably over 168.
What’s magical about the number 168? The accountant is rightabout this one: 168 is exactly how many hours are in the week for all ofus--whether you’re the Pope, a figure skater, the President of the UnitedStates, a stock broker, a major league baseball player, a bank teller, or ahairdresser.
The discrepancy between your count and 168 arises from yourunawareness of the interaction among the three voices within your mind, theAccountant, the Visionary, and the Mind’s Eye. In his first week of keepingtrack, notice that our future published writer has recorded activities to fill201 hours in the week. Where did the extra thirty-three hours come from? Nowthat he's admitted the discrepancy and recognized its magnitude, he's ready toget serious. Obviously he's more careful using the work sheet the second week,making sure he keeps closer tabs on where the time is going.
Once you’ve used these work sheets for two weeks, you havean accurate enough idea of where your time is going to make use of the ActualTime Inventory Analysis Work Sheet. Fill out the Activity and Hours per Weekcolumns using the results of your second Time Inventory Daily Work Sheet.
Next we want to find out, on a scale of 1 to 5 (5 beinghighest), how much each activity serves your goals. This is its VisionaryQuotient. And we’re not going to fool with "Sleeping" because theright amount of sleep is essential on all fronts.
There’s nothing magical about filling out the VisionaryQuotient column. Follow your gut reaction.
The Accountant's Quotient column rates the activity’simportance to your physical, financial, and psychological welfare. Takingwriting classes, as far as our banker’s onboard Accountant’s gut reaction isconcerned, has minimal present value. Your paycheck from the bank is keepingthe potatoes on the table. Obviously, on the other hand, this teller'sVisionary hates his day job. But notice that neither his Visionary nor hisAccountant is thrilled with the twelve hours weekly this man spends on errands.Although some might rightly regard "socializing" as a valuableactivity, our example obviously doesn’t. His Visionary hates it as much as hehates his day job, and his Accountant rates it only a 2. If he’s going to doanything about his socializing, he should think about socializing withdifferent people (exchanging the coffee shop in his neighborhood for the onewhere the social interaction might lead to useful networking.
The third column, presided over by your Mind’s Eye, combinesthe two quotients. This man’s bank job is a pain in the neck to his Visionary,but it does pay the bills--an activity the Accountant values to the utmost. Itreceives a 0 in the Visionary Quotient column, a 5 in the Accountant Quotient column.But your Mind’s Eye acknowledges that any activity with a combined quotient of5 or above will not be dropped or seriously reduced in time investment, therebykeeping both serpents happy.
The blank Actual Time Inventory Analysis Work Sheet below isfor your reassessment. Fill in the categories to suit your own life.
As it recognizes the unique power of both his Accountant’sand his Visionary’s perception of time, our teller’s Mind’s Eye knows that theyin of Accountant time and the yang of Visionary time are both valid,simultaneous, and equally important in their places and for their purposes.Telling them both that they're correct, and that they can take turns, hisMind’s Eye negotiates with the Accountant to allow a conservative, cautiousamount of time during which the "success dreams" of the Visionary canbe explored. Without the Mind’s Eye’s intervention, he was constantlyconflicted over his use of time. With his Mind’s Eye’s help and negotiation, hebegins to steal time for success, using his Goal Time Work Sheet to carve hoursfrom the twenty-four hour clock and to mine, methodically, the breakthroughenergy of the Visionary.
Activities that rate less than a 5 in the M.E. column aresubject to first-round negotiation. Let’s say you hate doing yard work, andgive it a 0 Visionary Quotient and a 1 Accountant Quotient. Obviously, we’regoing to find a way to get that particular activity out of your life. In ourteller’s inventory, "Driving Errands" falls into this category. So hefigures out a way of no longer doing errands. Instead of spending twelve hoursa week on errands, he decides to do four hours of overtime at the bank to payfor someone to do the shuttle service for him. Or he moves closer to his dayjob. These revised decisions, which become "goals," are recorded inthe Goal Time Work Sheet. Notice that by reducing "Driving/Errands"to two hours, and making a few other adjustments, he’s been able to increaseSales Calls from thirteen to twenty-four hours per week--which will inevitablyadvance his dream more quickly. At the same time, he’s managed to increase thepercentage of time devoted to the pursuit of his dream from 16% (combining"Sales Calls," "Writing Classes," and "Reading")to 26% because he’s increased the time available to make those sales calls, buthe’s also changed his way of socializing so that it serves the dream as well.
Time to schedule time
No time you spend is more important than the time you spendscheduling your time; and that needn’t be more than a tiny fraction of the timeavailable to you. But scheduling your time is doomed to ineffectiveness unlessyou begin from the reality baseline of knowing what you’ve been doing with yourtime, and confronting your own lack of awareness about where your time has beengoing.
The blank Goal Time Work Sheet helps your Mind’s Eyecomplete and memorialize its contract with Accountant and Visionary.
Once your knowledge of your time usage has allowed you tomake new goals and objectives regarding the use of time, how in this busy,busy, busy world do you enforce the objectives for yourself? How can youschedule a life that is one, long, endless shrieking, demanding interruption?After all, you can only turn off the phone for so long without losing yourillusion of control, and all contact with reality.
Next: How to make the clock of life YOUR clock.
