Time Management: Your Time vs Their Timeline
Earlier this year my dear friend Rachel was struggling with time management and starting to show signs of burning out. She had been working …
Earlier this year my dear friend Rachel was struggling with time management and starting to show signs of burning out. She had been working for a very prominent company for 4+ years, dedicating long hours to polishing the product’s design, messaging, onboarding new team of designers, and always doing what needed to be done to meet the company’s tight timelines.
Half way into the year she noticed that she had a team that was working well together. Rachel decided it was time to ask for some time off. She wanted to take 3-months off to get some much needed R&R so that she could come back refreshed and ready to tackle new challenges.
When Other People Don’t Respect Your Time Management
After a few discussions with her team and boss, they decided that it was too much time to take off. They were concerned about the impact it would make to their company and product’s timeline.
Rachel was at a cross roads. She loved the team she had assembled and the company, but she knew she couldn’t keep pushing herself just to please others. Something had to give.
Rachel was afraid of what lied ahead. She felt unsure about giving up this golden opportunity. But deep inside she knew that no opportunity was worth risking her health and well-being. She needed the time off.
Before the voice inside of her or anyone else talk her out of it, Rachel turned in her resignation letter, then set off to travel on her own for the next 3-months.
Being away helped her decompress, and be present to experience new moments. It was her time.
When she returned, time management became even more important. So she set a personal goal to not live like before: to not spend countless hours just working, ignore investing in self-care. She had a new set of priorities and she would figure out how to meet them.
Time Is Limited But There Are An Abundance Of Opportunities
Then she set off into the world, with an outlook of abundance and her mind open to opportunities.
Rachel was initially presented with a short-term assignment: a design consulting opportunity. It wasn’t the lead design position she had coveted before, but that’s not what she needed. She just wanted to get back into her practice, keep her mind active, and have a simple routine that would give her the flexibility to search for something bigger that would fulfill her.
Rachel isn’t alone, many of us struggle to say no to what we currently have. Time management is often seen as a nice-to-have instead of priority. We’re afraid of giving up something good, because we’re uncertain of finding something great. Partly because we get consumed by our day-to-day obligations of paying rent and putting food on the table.
Those are important, and we cannot just ignore them to go off on some grand quest to find ourselves. But they also shouldn’t hold us back completely from looking for what we need.
Rachel’s approach of learning what she needs, while doing small projects is one way to make that happen. She’s learned to say no to opportunities that are rigid, or where she’d be working towards someone else’s tight timeline. So she sets boundaries and communicates what she can contribute. This has given her time to explore.
Now I want to know, have you ever been in Rachel’s position? Being really burnt out, but also worried about the uncertainty that lies ahead? Let me know in the comments below!
