Photo by scubaham

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about changing my habits.  This year has been a pretty good one for me in general with changes to my habits regarding health and finance.  Another area where I’m going to be focusing this year is going to be on habits related to time management.

As I was thinking about my time management skills, I noticed a theme arise from my pool of thoughts around procrastination.  I’m actually a very experienced procrastinator.  I’d almost say I’m pretty good at getting things done when I really need to.  The problem is that I just can’t seem to complete everything plan for…just what’s on the first half of my to-do list.

Realizing I Was Borrowing Time From Myself

It hit me…like a Nerf bat to the head a half-dozen times in a cartoon-like fashion.  The source of my procrastination could be coming from my habit of borrowing from something I don’t have yet.  In this case, it’s time.  For example, when I’m cleaning out the garage I sometimes pick a corner to pile up things that I’ll go through later.  I get 75% of the garage cleaned, but then I’ve got this awful mess of stuff in a corner that’ll take me longer than that first 75%.  It’s very easy to walk away thinking I cleaned "most" of the garage, only to have to take twice as long next time just sorting through the mess to clean it correctly.

What happened here is that the first time I was cleaning, I really had the time to do it all correctly…but I ended up putting some of it off to do later, even though I wasn’t sure how much time I’d have in the upcoming weekends.  As it turned out, I was pretty busy the last 4-5 weekends and the mess is still there.  What I did was borrow future time in my mind that I ended up not having later because it was already allocated to something else.  So I wasted the time I had to go watch TV or something useless (I really don’t remember) essentially borrowing time in my mind from future weekends to finish the job I could have done now.

The Debt on Time

That borrowing of time from the future is the same mentality that got me into a financial mess with tons of debt!  Do you see the correlation?  I’ve borrowed a bunch of money to pay for things now based on some future income I’ll be getting.  With the garage, I borrowed time to complete the task later based on some future weekends in the schedule.

Photo by marina~

Now, since many of my weekends are filling up with other obligations, I’ll have to work twice as hard to manage enough time to eventually clean it all up.  I’ll probably have to do a little at a time over the course of a few weeks to finish it instead of being able to do it all at once.

This is the same predicament I’ve got for my finances!  It’s obvious that a behavior change is needed across the board here.  The debt mentality doesn’t stop at just finance.  You really need to break the debt habit with more than money, it can be applied to time the same way.  I’m not just talking about for chores either.  It can show up in lots of places:

1. Quality time with your family.
2. Finishing up a project for work.
3. Writing blog articles.
4. Paying bills.
5. Household chores.

I think your time management will improve if you think about your procrastination habits with the same despising hatred you have with debt.  I certainly have noticed a change in my attitude this weekend.  I had some family here for the holiday, and all the time I thought I’d have to do random tasks was completely eliminated by a change in plans.  Not that I regret spending time with family, but I’d have not put off so many things for the weekend instead of just doing them during my first opportunity!  I wouldn’t have procrastinated!  I wouldn’t have created my own debt on time.

How many of you seem to never have enough time for anything, but know your top 3 American Idol picks or can tell you all about the latest Lost romance?  Maybe it’s time for a re-examination of your time debt.  Got any other examples of things you’ve borrowed time for and still haven’t done?  Share your time debts with us, I’d like to hear if any of you are having some of the same issues.