What Really Matters?

"I'm sorry sir, you're overdrawn."

"What do you mean? I have plenty in that account. I want to see my statement."

"Certainly! We can review it together if you wish. Let's see, I show that you spent: 8 ½ hours sleeping; 2 hours eating breakfast with the morning show, showering, flossing and grooming that new hairstyle; 8 hours working at the office; 1 hour in your office on the phone with a friend; 1 hour at lunch in the fast food drive-thru line; ½ hour standing in line at the bank; ½ hour on the phone trying to buy hockey tickets; 1 hour in traffic; 1 hour at the grocery store; 1 ½ hours preparing and eating dinner, loading the dishwasher and walking the dog and 1 ½ hours watching television.

"Sir you are overdrawn by 2.5 hours. I'm afraid you have accrued a penalty. You will have to start tomorrow with only 21.5 hours."

I relate to this man. I can fritter away the hours of my life as easily as a child blows his allowance at a candy store, and often with less reflection. At the end of the day I realize that my time allotment has been used up, even though I haven't finished checking off all the items on my "to do" list.

The problem, I tell myself, is that I need to get organized. This leads me to invest in "tools" that promise an easier, more structured life. I make plans to buy a palm-pilot, write in my Day Timer, and purchase one or two of the 1,600 book titles offering foolproof ways to organize your time. Not surprisingly, there's even an idiot's guide to time management. But after these attempts fail, I can keep reading periodicals that promise 5 easy steps to a better life, or I can start to look at the tool user (namely me) and ask not "how to" but "why" can't I make this work?

Psychologist and Best Selling Author, Dr. Henry Cloud, says there are four reasons why people are unable to meet the demands of their day in timely fashion.

  1. Lack of awareness

    "It never occurs to some people that they are finite and they have limits; that every opportunity, task and choice is not available to them," says Dr. Cloud. "Sometimes, if someone grows up without a lot of structure or without a lot of limits early in life, they don't learn to live within limits."

  2. Can't say no

    "These people are aware of their limits," says Dr. Cloud, "but they can't say no because they feel obligated or afraid someone's going to get mad at them, or they need the person's approval. They may be over-performing to gain a sense of worth."

  3. Priority crisis

    People struggling with this time zapper "may never have gone through a personal reorientation to values and priorities," explains Dr. Cloud. "They've never understood that every task is not equal. There are vital tasks in life, and there are urgent tasks and then there are, for the most part, unimportant tasks. While vital tasks might be spending time with family, a few service commitments, attending to health and exercise and spiritual and personal development, what happens is things that are urgent, but much less important, tend to clamor for all the time. Then things that are neither vital nor urgent receive as high of a priority. If you have your list, and two or more of these priorities are ignored, it can lead to divorce, serious illness or financial disaster. They (the priorities) don't get done because the urgent things (like keeping Aunt Sally from being upset or having to go run this errand or that) continue to take precedent."

  4. Avoiding the issue

    "Sometimes over-commitment and over-filling of time is actually a defensive maneuver to escape what somebody would feel if they weren't so busy," says Dr. Cloud. "Maybe there is a spiritual, emotional or relational emptiness, or some kind of pain or trauma that has never been dealt with, so they drive themselves to frenetic activity to keep from feeling these things."

    This last issue reminds me of a conversation I recently had with an entomologist at Arizona State University about ants. He informed me that despite the childhood story of the grasshopper and the ant, ants aren't consistently orderly creatures. He said the frenzied activity of an ant is like chickens running around with their heads cut off. "Until," he added, "they find a food source." Then they get organized.

    That's it! The human struggle with time management stems from our inability to identify where the sustenance is, and for that matter, what it is! We scurry about senselessly searching for something meaningful in life but often accomplish nothing of great value. We could be so much more resourceful if we knew what in the world we were looking for. In other words, what should our priorities be? What really matters?

    According to Dr. Cloud, there are typically three ways people find out what's important in life. The first: they inherit it. "People are trained, nurtured, developed and taught by people who have gone before them. For example parents," says Dr. Cloud. "When we grow up we are supposed to be inheriting time-tested, proven values. We adapt to those transcendent values that rise above the immediate wishes or desires. We question and reexamine these values, but it should offer us a little bit of a head start, and a launch into learning what's important in early childhood.

    "Sometimes, this information is not given to people, or they reject it and travel another path that has to do with immediate gratification or goals that end up not nourishing the soul and spirit of man. They seek things like: materialism, performance, fame or power."

    The second way people learn to prioritize is when wisdom comes to them and corrects them. "They have an enlightenment or epiphany," says Dr. Cloud. "They go down a certain road, and wisdom shows up and says, 'you are really wasting your life here. You are chasing the dollar but you have nobody to share it with.' Sometimes people don't listen to wisdom or heed that enlightenment. Then, the unimportant things they have chosen run their course, and they ultimately find themselves in crisis."

    "Oftentimes," says Dr. Cloud, "this crisis can bring them to realize what is important, to reorder their life. This happened to our country as a result of 9/11. Some people, although not directly affected, were shocked into check[ing] their priorities. Other people, as a result of the market crashing and going into financial crisis, were driven to turn around."

    Often, in order to actualize our priorities, we may have to reach outside of ourselves, says Dr. Cloud. "Ground yourself in the higher power of the experience of others who have gone before you. You don't have to reinvent the wheel of what's important in the universe. We have a history of sojourners."

    When it comes to looking for a role model who successfully prioritized his life and later realized his goals, none compare to Jesus Christ. His short, three-year ministry exemplified a focused mind undistracted by culture or crisis.

    In his book, Freedom from Tyranny of the Urgent , Charles Hummel points out that "Prominent in Jesus' ministry is not only a resolve to make good use of his short length of time, but also a sense of the right time for action."

    For example, one morning Jesus' friends were looking for him when they found him praying and making plans to move on to the next town. This upset some of his disciples who wanted Jesus to stay in their village. After all, there were still more folks right there that needed healing. But Jesus was not distracted. He replied, "I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent."

    In another passage, Christ delayed a trip to one town, even though he had been summoned to help a friend who was dying. What appeared as insensitivity on Christ's part, proved to be divine timing when a deceased Lazarus was brought back from the dead. Perhaps the secret to Jesus' successful ministry was his ability to transcend the immediate crisis and look toward future goals.

    Dr. Cloud believes this ability to look ahead to future consequences is what separates the wise from the foolish. "Often, we don't think things out to their logical conclusion. For example, I'm totally free to watch a movie instead of working. What's going to be the result of either? One is that I forgo the movie, finish my work and go to bed in peace. The other is that I will have a couple hours of entertainment and then go to bed burdened because now I have one less day to meet my deadline. Can I live with that?"

    Viewing time in light of consequences, says Dr. Cloud, can also assist with long-term goals. "I spoke to a lady who wanted to go to graduate school but said it would take too long. I explained that three years is going to come no matter what. The question is, do you want to have a degree in three years or do you want to be stuck where you are right now? Change comes from experiencing reality. The people who have wisdom experience future reality in the present and adjust accordingly."

    It is possible for "spenders" to better guard their time by empowering them to say no to things that interfere with their goals. Everyone has the same, finite, 24-hour resource called "time." The CEO and the homeless man both start each day with identical hours. It's what they do with those hours that make all the difference. Success lies in budgeting. The wise man gains the advantage when he starts thinking about how to spend tomorrow, today.

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Other Things to Consider

Transitions: Changing Jobs, Moving

Relationships: Communication Gaps

Parenting Teens: Communication Problems