 What is time management? In this video, I'm going to share with you my perspective. I'm going to tell you a story, and I'm going to share with you my examples, and I hope to inspire you to manage your time more wisely and more effectively. So let's get started. So first of all, let me give you my definition of time management. It is the practice of planning and pursuing our priorities in an ever wiser way. It's a practice, meaning it's not that you take a course in time management, and now you're going to be a better time management forever. You're going to be a great time management forever. I've been practicing time management for, gosh, more than 20 years, and I'm certainly better at time management now than I was back then, but I'm even better at time management now than even six months ago, because I see it as a practice. I see it as something I can always get wiser in, and so that's what I really invite you to do as well, is to don't think that just because you watch the video, took a course, you try to apply it, and it didn't work, therefore you are not meant to be good at time management. No, no, no, you practice. And the practice is in planning. So learning how to schedule your day wisely, to schedule your week, your month, make sure the most important priorities in your life and in your business are scheduled in, and then of course pursuing your schedule, meaning on a day-to-day, moment-to-moment basis, are you acting according to your plan? And of course, planning can always get wiser as you observe, oh, I should have planned more time for that, or oh, I should have not planned my Saturday so I can have a day without plans, so it is important to also have time off without plans so that you can give yourself the spaciousness to really rest and really renew your creativity. But it is, I think, important to plan sometimes and to learn how to pursue your plans, to plan your priorities and to learn how to pursue them on a moment-to-moment basis, which includes graciously declining the external requests from other people that do not align with your priorities, okay, can be requests from family, from friends, from colleagues, from acquaintances that do not align with your priorities, and also to gracefully decline or ignore the internal whims that are not in alignment with your priorities at this time. That's actually a very big challenge. Time meant, you know, conscious living, intentional living, and I believe living well is not about just saying, oh, I feel like doing this today, I'm just going to do that, oh, I suddenly find this thing very interesting, so I'm going to go and pursue that, shiny new object, okay, because you got to realize that as a human being, you have evolved to be very susceptible to shiny new objects. That's how our ancestors had to survive in the jungle and in the wild, we had to be very attuned to any new stimulation and kind of pay attention to that, make sure that's okay. But now in our technological society, where shiny new objects pop up, you know, all the time and new email, new ideas, new social media postings, new paths to pursue, we need to actually consciously ignore and evolve away from our jungle past where it was important to pay attention to internal whims and external demands and requests, okay. So it's about planning and becoming more wiser about your plans over time. So what are your priorities in life? That's the first question to start with. And you may want to pause this video and write down, what are your priorities in life? What are your priorities in business? What's important? What's truly important to you in your business? You may want to pause and write some of this and then go on. Now let me tell you a story about priorities. The story you may have heard of, it's called the Big Rock story and I find it helpful to review the story every couple of months to remind me how true this is and to inspire me again to renew my priorities and to stay true to it, okay. So the story goes like this, a teacher in a classroom teaching priorities to his class brought out a big glass jar and he also brought out a tray of rocks, big rocks and he started to put these big rocks in this jar, okay, one by one. He actually asked his class, how many rocks do you think I can fit in? Some students said maybe three, some students said 12, you know, some students somewhere in between. So he started putting these big rocks in the jar and he turned out that he was able to fit six of these big rocks in the glass jar. So it looked like this and now he asked his class, now is the jar full? And the class looked at the jar carefully and said, yeah, you can't fit any more big rocks in there. So yes, the jar is full. And then the teacher said, actually he took out a tray of sand from underneath the desk and underneath his desk and he said, actually the jar is not full. And he proceeded to pour the sand into the jar and the sand started to fill in the spaces in between the big rocks. And once the sand filled all the way to the top, now he said, the jar is now full. But notice this, if I had put the sand in the jar first before the rocks, I could not have fit six big rocks in the jar. But only after I put the big rocks in, did I fill in the sand, then both could coexist in the jar. So the lesson is, do not put in the sand first, put in the rocks first. The rocks represent your priorities. The sand represents your internal wins, the things you feel like doing or the external demands from other people that are not aligned with your priorities. So remember putting your big rocks first and then allow the sand in instead of letting the sand fill your jar first. So the question is, what are your big rocks? And what are your sand? I encourage you to pause the video right now and just take a moment to write down, these are my big rocks and these are my sand in your life and in your business. And once you're ready, unpause this video and I'm going to share with you what mine are. But I want you to write yours first so you don't get biased by mine. Okay, ready? Let me share with you what mine are. I have personal big rocks and professional big rocks and same thing with the sand. So my personal big rocks are my evening routine, which means I need to start early enough. And I think about my big rocks as the things that fit into my jar, which is my jar is my schedule, my calendar, because my priorities in life cannot be fulfilled unless I give my, I give the proper time and energy to those priorities. Does that make sense? I can't just say I'm going to be healthy, but I don't give time and energy to my health. I can't say I'm going to be a build a successful business, but I don't give time and energy to my marketing. So that's why I think of my jar as my calendar. If it's in my calendar and I practice pursuing being faithful to my calendar, then I fulfill my priorities. I live them. I manifest them in my life. So my big rocks, my evening routine, I need to start my evening early enough, my evening routine early enough, meaning get ready for bed, you know, make sure that the kitchen is cleaned up, things like that, floss and my hygiene, all these things. I need to start that early enough. If I want to get to bed early enough so I can get enough sleep for the next day. So that's really my first big rock is start my evening early enough. And I actually, for many years, I actually had an evening alarm. Not only do I have a morning alarm, I have an evening alarm, which I think is even more important to wake me out of the evening trance is to start my evening routine. My morning routine is very important as well. Things that allow me to start my day from a more mindful spiritual priorities place. Walking my dog, obviously a big rock that I need to put in my calendar. Otherwise I won't get the quality time with my dog and quality time for my health in terms of walking. Anyways, some other things that I put in to my schedule, so to keep my balance and my equanimity and my health, bits of reading anchored throughout the day so that I actually make progress on reading books. Otherwise, my books just keep piling up. So I just, you know, every throughout the day, I take five minutes here and there before certain things and after certain things to do some readings to make some progress in my books. I enjoy it and not just books, but also reading my internet bookmarks that I found were important websites. Okay, I'm going to go back and read this. Now I also spend time doing that. Sometimes it's books, sometimes it's bookmarks and on the internet. Okay, dinner and media, basically spending time with my wife. We enjoy watching certain shows and make us laugh and relax having dinner together. Evening dog walk, weekends off of work, very important and evenings off of work as well, so that I can have the spaciousness of not having plans, especially my Saturdays completely open, no professional plans on my calendar, no personal plans on my calendar, totally open so I can rest my calendaring mind and just have that spaciousness to renew once a week. And I also take vacations once every six weeks. I take one week off, no plans at all, no professional plans, and I try not to have any personal plans. Maybe meeting with friends here and there planned, but just have that spaciousness of true rest and renewal so that I can let myself kind of go, let my willpower just go, so that I can have that spaciousness to be creative, renew my creativity again. And of course, trips to see family are important as well. Okay, my personal sand. Okay, this is playing games on my iPhone. Sometimes I can get too addicted so I know that if I do that, it can eat away at my big rocks time, right? So I got to make sure my big rocks are done and maybe on the vacations or in the weekends, then I can indulge and play a game which can suck up an hour or two of my time. But I got to get my big rocks in first and then let the sand fill in, watching TV at night, making sure my work is done and then watch TV. I try not to work on the nights and weekends, right? If I follow my big rocks, then I don't have to work on nights and weekends, but if I don't, I let the sand fill in, then I end up working, right? Or getting involved with family drama, I try not to, only on vacations when I see family, then I can get involved, but during my regular time, I try to let each person learn how to solve their own issues before I step in. Okay, my professional big rocks, preparing for my client meetings, of course, very important after client meetings to have a time to write the journal, what the clients found useful. That's so helpful for content creation, making more videos and blog posts based on what really helped my client so that I can serve more people with those ideas and those exercises, rebooting my energy. I've talked about energy reboot before, so I want to watch that video. Doing my social media caring during lunches, checking out my Facebook notifications once a day during lunch and also in the evening when I'm totally complete with everything or on the weekends when I'm totally complete, then I can do social media as well. I call it social media caring because basically I'm liking people's postings and I'm commenting on things if I have time. Creating, creating regular videos and blog posts, okay, like this video, right, and writing my blog posts. Very important professional big rock, it continues to hone my thoughts and my ideas and helps me organize my ideas to share them to help as many people as I can to help my clients as well. Working on my book, basically collating my blog posts and editing them into my book, continuous service improvement, improving how I work with my clients so that it's even more effective, how I run my group program so it's even more effective. Sending a weekly newsletter and a monthly newsletter. This link just goes to my email at georgecow.com slash email if you haven't yet seen my website and opted in there if you wish to. So that's important. My quarterly launch, I have an email list just for my people who want to know when I'm launching my next group program or when I'm available to take on clients again, that type of thing. That's important to let my launch list know on a regular basis if I'm ready to serve more clients or if I have room in my groups, things like that. Twice yearly to update my website. Now this is something a lot of people let languish, but I put it in as my professional big rock. I plan it into my calendar twice a year. Okay, let's take a comprehensive look through my website, which pages need to be updated and then schedule that into my calendar to gradually update my website, the ones that the pages that do need it. Quarterly website user interview. I'll put the link in to show you what that means and quarterly niche interview. I'll put that link in. So even though I am pretty clear about what my niche is and I'm pretty happy about my website, I know I can always use improvement. That's why I'm always improving myself and I'm always improving my niche, my offerings to be even better. My professional stand, checking Facebook and Google Plus notifications more than once a day, that can then take me away and detract me from having a focus. Or doing some web research right when I have some question. I just immediately go and do research. Usually it's not a good idea because that can suck up another half hour, another hour. So I got to be careful. If I have a question, I write it down on my to-do list so that when, and then I categorize that item at the end of each day, I categorize my to-do list, put it in the right big rock time in my calendar so that, oh, it's like I have a question about marketing. Well, I put it in my marketing time so that next time I'm working on my marketing, I can look at that question and do some research on it rather than doing it right then and there when I have the idea. Commenting in online groups when it's not my client group, when it's not my mastermind or my group program. I do that when I have extra time but not as something that I do to escape my big rocks. I have to be careful about that. So I hope that's helpful as my examples. I look forward to, if you want to, please comment underneath this video to share with me and with us, the community that's watching this video. What are your big rocks? What are your sand? If you care to share about that, if you are open to sharing that, I'm sure that will help other people who are watching this get some ideas and you can also get some ideas from other people as well. I hope that this video, I hope that you apply this video, please do apply the ideas in this video to improve your time management so that you can really use your precious life, your precious energy and time to serve your higher purpose and to really fulfill your life's greatest goals.