Perpendicular Life Management
Time is a merciful doctor, a cruel teacher or simply an a-priori parameter of our world. Someone considers it to be linear, others believe it to be non-linear and someone is absolutely sure the universe lives in accordance with another kind of laws. And business people together with simple fellow-countrymen obsessed with their personal efficiency claim that it is necessary to manage the time at our disposal and to try and regulate our life. This raises the question of life and time management. Though, Bulgakov once wrote that “…to rule one must have a precise plan worked out for some reasonable period ahead. Allow me to enquire how man can control his own affairs when he is not only incapable of compiling a plan for some laughably short term, such as, say, a thousand years, but cannot even predict what will happen to him tomorrow?”
Probably, everything I say here sounds like heresy, but I together with a mysterious stranger at Patriarch's Ponds am sure that rigid planning in the turbulent business medium is harmful rather than useful. Of course, it is possible to minimize negative effects due to various techniques of regular plans updating (different versions of sliding planning). However, it seems to me that in management it is more important to develop a conceptual approach, to understand your priorities, to “trim your sails to the wind” proactively following early trends and using windows of opportunities.
A clear example is that of budgeting and beyond budgeting. In its nature, the first approach presupposes that statements – calculations, budgets, etc. – are prioritized. The second one implies understanding of the strategic vector, knowledge of the market and an ability to take managerial decisions (including an ability to identify priorities).
Correspondingly, in my personal, deeply subjective opinion, we can also follow one of the two similar ways in time management. That is, within the first one it is necessary to scrupulously plan each step, make task lists, arrange them according to their character of “urgent-cum-important”, use paper and digital schedulers, adhere to a strict timetable. And within the framework of the second approach you can even live like the “YES Man” seizing every opportunity that life offers not trying to place all its diversity on the procrustean bed of rigid principles and proportions of the time resource allocation.
My personal variant of “perpendicular life/time management” is close to the second option. The only difference is I do not place my faith in the unconditional wisdom of the Universe and from time to time I say “no” to some tempting opportunities that open up to me. Yet, I do not know what a scheduler is (that is, I saw it, I showed how it works to people but I have never used it myself), I subconsciously arrange “urgent-cum-important things”, I try to plan meetings on a daily basis in the mode of flexible adjustment of schedules of “the high contracting parties”. And I prefer not to know “the day to come, what is it bearing”. It would be terribly and painfully boring for me to know exactly how I will live the next day. There must be even more space for surprise in our life than for heroic deeds. That is why after a morning round of easy meetings I let Lady Luck surprise me with new routs of my life journey.
Probably, it is my specific profession that offers me a luxury of working under such conditions and the ability to remember my schedule and to plan my life without a piece of paper and gadgets is in my genes (touch wood). Obviously, I would not recommend anybody to follow my example. Each has their own style of life management: someone likes classical models taught by consulting and training companies, someone has to reinvent the wheel themselves, someone is able to successfully and intuitively “surf” without sailing directions. That is why, those who decide to build their life “perpendicular” to planning principles should assess risks thoroughly, try carefully, not roll into extremes and combine “planning” and “non-planning” reasonably and calmly. And may Time and Joy be with you.
http://forbes.net.ua/woman/1373604-perpendikulyarnyj-lajf-menedzhment
Tags: free time