I have a habit of idling time away because I seem to be only able to do things when there isn’t enough time to do them in.
I hear that this is normal, and I like to think of it as being motivated by tight deadlines.
Someone once used the word procrastination when I was discussing this, but I ignored them.
It was on a Time Management course I did when I was a corporate-type and we used to just take whatever courses we fancied when The Manager passed around the thick course catalogue from some Professional Training Provider.
They said, and I think they were right actually, that “it’s not time management, it’s self management” (stress on the “self“) which is of course blindingly obvious after being told, because you cannot manage time – even Stephen Hawking couldn’t do that if you gave him a black hole and a pair of pliers.
So it was my Self Management that was the problem.
Gulp.
So I started using the calendar function on my new iPod the other day to see if it would help, but I simply find such gadgets to be irritatingly intangible and they drive me nuts.
I have tried diaries, file-o-faxes and all manner of electronic jiggery-pokery, but I simply cannot seem to find something which works for me, I always seem to end up working for it.
I am astonished when people reveal a slim black pointing device from the snug side pocket on some whizzy telephone-organiser-camera contraption and tap away for ten minutes to say “yes, that’s right, it’s half-past eight”
I suppose if you stop using your brain it heals up, so perhaps not downloading my schedule into a computer is a good thing, or perhaps not, perhaps if I stop using it to remember trivia I could simply write down I could use it to ponder lots of very clever things.
Maybe that’s Stephen Hawking’s trick.
By the way, in case you were wondering, the time management course was largely a waste of time.
John Tomlinson 