Time Management Ruined My Life

Yes I blame it all on Stevie Covey, and of course my ex wife. But not necessarily in that order. My ex wife at least brought some very special and wonderful moments and things into my life. Not so with Stevie. Both cases are examples of the joining together of two incompatible spirits. Both unions then have the potential for extreme disaster. Disaster is what both brought to me.

I had been what I would have felt as successful at the time. Had a good job, wife , two children. With all that comes with it. House, two cars, and the never-ending nagging feeling that I was not finding that elusive work life balance that was being touted, and still is to this day, although the pendulum has swung. Admittedly time management tools have been around since the human concept of time was refined. but in the latter half of the twentieth century it had become big business. With the explosion of media, it grew enormous. In the dawning age of internet access, people who would never have wandered into a book store in search of such a thing, hade it right on their desktop, soon to be literally in their laps. So with me it started on my desktop, and then ended up in my lap.

The people we spend most of our time with have a strong influence on us whether we admit it or not. So it was with my wife. With the growing of our family, the move further away from my friends, family, and work peers; to the center of my wife's desired center of family, friends, and where she wanted to be made me feel isolated and more dependent on her dreams. But that is a whole other story.

Her devotion to the self help guru's and enrichment programs, the evidence of which no doubt still sit on the books of the credit cards she bankrupted herself out of after eliminating me, the one with the income to enable such charges of fancy, I too did get sucked into that world. I became a believer caught up in her jet stream. I started planning my days, weeks, months. Set long range goals, daily tasks, master tasks, and began to keep an incomprehensible Journal. The journal of my demise.

I am sure it works well for some, but as usual I jumped in with both feet and ended up over my head. I was soon to be doomed to spend so much time planning, keeping track of what I had done and hadn’t done, and generally feeling bad about not accomplishing what In set out to do . It sent me spiraling into an ever widening maw of the abyss. Sure there was always the moment of sheer elation as I scratched off the completed tasks, which often made me feel empowered only to sink into the bliss of inaction. After all I completed what I wanted to accomplish that day. Never mind the millions of things that I should have done, been doing or just plain put off because the thought of doing them was more painful that the torture of not doing them. The tricks my brain plays on me often makes my jaw drop to the floor.

But when the jaw is on the floor, that is when the bugs run in.