By Todd Duncan

When you manage your time, you manage your values. When you manage your values, you begin to enjoy inner peace because everything about you and your life is becoming consistent. When your values are clear to you, the decisions on how to use your time no longer appear challenging. Your job is to continue aligning your values with your activities. Consider this excerpt from Time Management by Richard Winwood:

Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson in The One-Minute Manager have stated, “People who feel good about themselves produce good results.” The direct relationship between our sense of self-worth and our personal productivity is a relatively new concept in management. In time management, because its basis is personal productivity, the relationship is vital. A person may possess many practical skills and be able to apply them well and yet have a very low self-esteem. 

This person may feel a great discomfort at the thought of having to learn a new skill or having to change his environment in any meaningful way. Another person with a high self-esteem may be lacking in practical skills but having no fear of learning or of confronting a new environment can quickly and enjoyably learn and adapt to different situations. In the latter example, the person had confidence in his or her ability—based on a healthy self-esteem.

To live life on purpose, you must get far enough ahead of the curve to bolster your confidence and take more control. Your esteem is enhanced when you do; it suffers when you do not. If you fail to control the events in your life, then events will put a choke hold on you. You will feel like a victim and not know why.

Your productivity goes up when you are in control; it goes down when you are not. In that weakened state, you will make weak decisions, and every weak decision will affect your productivity, seducing you to accept less of what you truly want. To enjoy the healthiest life possible, you need to:

1. Know your key value areas;

2. Determine specifically what you want in those areas;

3. Learn new skills, if necessary, to be more effective in those areas;

4. Schedule activities that give you a sense of accomplishment in those areas;

5. Repeat your behaviors consistently. This is vital, because it brings about an alignment between what you are doing and what you know is values-based.

Gaining control of events that strengthen you and help you achieve your highest priorities is the foundation you must have to live the life you want to live. Once you start along this path, you will find that everything begins to come together. Within weeks, even days, you can make more progress than you have in years past.

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