You have landed on this page because you want to learn NLP time management skills... Phone 07 5562 5718 or send an email to book a free 20 minute telephone or Skype session with Abby Eagle. NLP Coaching, Hypnotherapy and Meditation. Gold Coast, Robina, Australia. Online NLP Coaching sessions on Skype and by phone also available.

What is the Value That You Put on Your Time and Your Life?

NLP Time Management Training - How to Monetise Each Moment

How much time do you have to spend?

(By Abby Eagle) What is the value that you put on your life? What is time worth to you?

I'd like you to stop for a moment and think about two possible futures that you could have at 85 years of age. A negative future and a positive future.

The negative future is the worst possible future that you could imagine. You have no money, no friends, your health is poor, you live in the street and you have to eat at a food kitchen. This future should scare you so much that you feel a "no" rise in your mind.

In your positive future you have money, health, friends, security, comfort and happiness. You look back upon life with a sense of pride that you did the best that you could; that you squeezed the juice from every moment; that you treated obstacles as an opportunity to learn how to make life even better for yourself and others. When you look back upon your life you know in your heart that it was a life well worth lived.

We all need a negative compelling future or a positive compelling future. That is a fancy way of saying that the thought of the future is either something you want to avoid or something you want to embrace.

The future is not predetermined. You have choice and to a considerable degree you can influence your future but which one are you going to get? You see, every decision, every thought, every action will either lead you towards a negative or a positive future. Which one do you want? The negative or the positive? Until you get clear distinctions between your negative and positive compelling futures, and specifically map out the steps and stages to reach your goals, you could end up anywhere, and a lot of people do.

So what do you want to do, to be and to have in life? What would you like to experience? What would you like to have and to get? Who would you like to be and to become? When do you want the outcome? Where do you want it? The goal might be compelling but do you know how to get it, do you know the action steps? You might know all of that but do you have the resources?

In my opinion understanding your own personality type, time, money and knowing the right people are the most important resources. Given enough time and money most of us could achieve our goals but time is limited - you only have so much time, and just as the clock ticks away the seconds, so do the moments of your life disappear forever.

Time is the most valuable resource that you have

Knowledge you can gain, skills you can develop, experiences you can have, understandings can arise, possessions you can accumulate, money you can borrow from others or you can make - but time is the only resource that is outside of your control - time is your most valuable resource.

Can you store time in a Bank account; can you horde it in a cupboard? As you get older and time runs out does time become more or less valuable to you? Perhaps time always had that value but only with the onset of old age and death do you become more aware of how precious time actually is.

How do you currently spend your time? How much time do you spend watching television? If you watch television are you getting value on that investment? At the end of the day do you reflect back upon the day and say to yourself? "I had a great day to day. I spent 6 hours watching television. I feel so fulfilled."

At 85 years of age will you look back on life and say, "I spent my life in front of a television set. What was it all about?" Sadly this is what happens to a lot of people.

Or at 85 years of age will you look back on life with a sense of pride, satisfaction and fulfillment that it was a life well worth lived; that you did the best that you could; that you squeezed the juice from every moment?

Which future is most compelling? The negative future or the positive future?

If you want to get better 'value for money' from your life then read on.

If there was a way to find more time would you be interested?

For this section you are going to need a calculator. Let's say you spend 10 minutes each day watching advertisements on Television. Ten minutes per day over a week adds up to 70 minutes. Over a 30 day month that would be 300 minutes or 5 hours. Over 12 months that adds up to 60 hours. For this exercise if we say there is 40 hours in a work week then this would equal 1.5 work weeks wasted watching advertisements.

Ten minutes of television advertising would equal about an hour of television. What if the television program itself was third rate, and had little value? So we take 1 hour a day for 365 days of the year spent on watching a third rate TV program. That is 365 hours. We divide 365 by our 40 hour work week which gives us 9 work weeks. That is 9 work weeks wasted on television.

If you reduced your television watching by just 1 hour each day and used that time in a more productive way, how much better off would you be at the end of the year? What if you could earn an extra 9 weeks of income or spend that 9 weeks of time doing something of real value, a holiday perhaps?

How much time do you spend travelling to work?

Let's say you commute 90 minutes to work each day. That is 3 hours, 5 days a week which adds up to 15 hours over a week, 60 hours a month, 660 hours in a year - which equals 16.5 work weeks. Is that how you want to spend your life - sitting on a train or in a traffic jam? Is there any way that you could reclaim or better utilise that time?

How much time do you waste in negative thinking?

If you spend 10 minutes each day in negative thinking then over a week you have wasted 70 minutes. That adds up to 60 hours over a year. But let's be brutally honest here. How much time do you spend each day thinking negative thoughts, reflecting upon what went wrong in the past, worrying about what might go wrong in the future, worrying what others might think of you, arguing with people in your mind? Let's be conservative and say you waste 1 hour each day on negative unproductive thinking. That is 365 hours over a hear, about 9 work weeks.

Nine weeks every year wasted on negativity! But what if you turned your attitude around and made a decision to put aside the negative thoughts, to refuse the negative thoughts, to stop the negative thoughts and to direct your mind towards positive thoughts that helped you to achieve your most cherished desired outcomes? Would shifting your mind from the negative to the positive be something that would bring real value into your life?

What are the myriad of ways that us humans waste our time?

1. Arguing with friends, family and loved ones.
2. Watching third rate Television programs.
3. Aimless surfing of the Internet.
4. Too much time on social networking sites.
5. Travelling to work.
6. Laying awake at night.
7. Negative thinking.
8. Dealing with junk email.
9. Dealing with Telemarketers.
10. "What other ways can you think of?"

Some of the ways that I have reclaimed time for me

1. Checking emails: setting up rules in the Outlook Email program to shunt emails automatically into different folders. Being systematic and methodical. In regards to dealing with emails I am happy if I can save ten seconds on dealing with each email. This could add up to 5 minutes of time save over a day. That is 30 hours a year. Regards junk email, I have found the best use of time in most cases is to just delete the email, as trying to unsubscribe or add it to the spam list takes too long.
2. Once a week I methodically clear my inbox.
3. Making phone calls - the ten minute rule. In this respect I have had to train up some of my friends and family.
4. Dealing with telemarketers decisively. As soon as I have determined that the call is from a telemarketer I hang up without saying a word, as just the effort in saying goodbye is a waste of time and energy.
5. My strategy is to pay bills as soon as they come in.
6. Staying with one Internet provider and one telephone company and not constantly switching plans.
7. Systematising the grocery shopping and where possible combining it with a work activity.
8. Health is important to me so I don't eat take-away or packet food. That means I need to spend considerable time in preparing my meals. So I keep refining the systems that I use to prepare breakfast, lunch and dinner.
9. Multi tasking activities, sequencing and chunking.
10. At the end of the day I clear my desk, cross off all the completed tasks, back up the computer, and write a list for the next day. In this way I can free up my mind to enjoy the present moment.
11. I used to suffer from insomnia until I developed strategies to get to sleep, and to get back to sleep.
12. Taking care of my health gives me a more productive and enjoyable day and should give me a longer and happier life.

Some suggestions on how to better manage your time

Learn to sequence and chunk activities into a manageable size. By chunking a lot of smaller actions into one chunk the mind has less to think about. For example, if you think about all the steps and stages involved in going on an overseas holiday, it could become stressful but once you have had some experience with travelling it can be reduced to a series of smaller chunks like: decide on destination, book hotel, diarise the dates, pay for ticket, pack suitcase, get to airport. If someone else can take care of this for you then it becomes just one chunk.

Keep a desk diary and diarise both personal and business activities and projects. Even with digital technology I personally still use a desk diary. It is so much faster than a phone or computer diary.

Awareness: ask yourself questions like, "Is this what I want to be doing right now? Does this thought serve me? What should I be doing? What would I rather be doing?"

Multi task, work with your biorhythm each day, each week and each year - follow your energy. Learn to support your body and mind - bring balance into each day, each week, each month and each year. Do the most important jobs when your energy and brain power is at its highest.

Reward yourself periodically throughout the day with a positive coaching internal dialogue and say something to the effect, "I love you (your name), I think you are beautiful, you are doing great."

In what ways could you better spend your time?

In what ways could you save time? In what ways could you better utilise time? In what ways could you become more efficient? If you could save just ten minutes of time each day and then invest that time in something more important to you, and get compound interest on those efforts then what could you achieve over the next 5 years?

Your contribution to this article is welcomed so please take a moment to leave your comments below. And if you are interested in NLP Coaching then please contact me using the contact form on this page.

Copyright © Abby Eagle

×