The evolution of time management

You are no longer in the world in which you were born. And if you could glimpse the world in which you will die, you would be in awe. What time management practices and organising techniques will you be using two, 10 or 20 years from now? Everything that you

interact with — your work, your environment, your relationships, your tools and equipment — impact the way you manage time. And these are changing. The only thing we really know about the future is that we will be a part of it — and even that is not a given.
If the future will be different, how do we prepare for it? The same way students are now being prepared for jobs that do not yet exist. We must learn to learn. We must maintain and nurture our creativity. We must ensure that we are on the cutting edge of trends. We must be flexible, adaptable, and open to new ideas. And we must live like we drive — defensively — protecting our body, mind and spirit. For we know from our past that everything in our future will not be harmless. We must be able to identify and deal with the good, the bad and the ugly.
Holistic time management is the wave of the future — a merging of disciplines, everything that impacts body, mind and spirit — in order to live a longer, healthier, happier, more productive and fulfilling life. Time management is no longer a simple matter of getting more done in less time or even getting more important things done. These are still part of it, but by no means the entire story.
We are no longer in the simple nine-to-five world of the past. We now take our work everywhere we go. It crowds out our families, friends, and even our sleep and mental and physical health. We multi-task to the point of being ineffective, we toss and turn in bed only to wake up to hundreds of email messages, social network updates, and a to-do list that is never even close to getting completed. So if we are so busy doing ‘important things’ then why are we making less money, working more hours, sleeping less, getting divorced more, and feeling generally overwhelmed?
Many of us are already losing control of our lives. It is almost as though we are becoming slaves to our own inventions. Technology appears to have a mind of its own. For example, the internet is a massive storage and retrieval system that appears to be self-perpetuating. Some scientists have actually referred to it as a brain. In time, the number of computers linked to it may exceed the 100
billion neurons in our human brain. But it is not a human brain.
In holistic time management, we need to use the power of our mind, along with technology — including the internet itself —
to confront and control the complexity of the change that threatens our ability to manage our time and our lives. We look at the whole person — mind, body and spirit — not just personal productivity or attitude or ability to cope with stress.