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Hello, I’m Elaine Kung. Blessings from California, United States. We continue with Work-Life Balance series, topic number fifteen. We now reflect on all that we've learned and summarize and how to apply. We focus on the few tools that we talked about, setting goals with wisdom, set the right priorities, and AIM. Skills for time management, BEST. Seek to do right things in the right way, the TIMES. So, we address these four today.
We summarize all that we've discussed so far. We want to make sure we have good GOALS definition. This goal should be the SMART goal. Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. And these goal statements are positive statements, defining why you'd want to do it, what's the motivation? And what you want to do, how you want to do them, and how much do you want to accomplish? So, having well defined goals is important for our time management so that you know the direction you're going and how well you're making progress and helping you set priorities.
‘O’ is to observe the right priority. Remember, we talked about Q2, the important and not urgent. That's where we want to spend the most time. And then Q1 is important and urgent, you've got to do those, and guess what? Let's work on one stone killing multiple birds, sounds pretty brutal. What I meant is doing one task that can give us multiple benefits. And I’ll show you example, in my family, in my work life. One event, one task that can give us multiple benefits and multiple blessings. That way, you’ll get the most mileage, out of your time management.
‘A’ is to avoid procrastination, that's been a time killer. If we procrastinate, you are rushing and you're not doing a good job, not a good quality. So, you're most smart with your time management when you focus and group the similar work and priority together, and you focus, and you be a lot more efficient and very effective. ‘L’, live with focus, with minimum interruptions. We reinforce how important focus is and minimize the interruption that could be distracting, such as our many electronic devices or people. So that way you really focus. And ‘S’ is schedule align to your goals and prioritization. If you think these are important, make sure they are in your calendar, including your rest.
Now, how do we manage with AIM? So, we talked about in a past session, that AIM is the comprehensive way for us to prioritize, and execute. ‘A’ is accountability. In the next few session, we will focus more on making sure we have people to keep us accountable. When we’re accountable, we are very clear in our list of activity, how we spend our time. And knowing the difference between what's urgent and what's important, and try to focus on those. And be very practical and realistic in how to list out what we need to do and allocate the time and then prioritize them. L.A.P., list of things to do, allocate time and prioritize according to our goal and keep ourselves accountable.
‘I’ is implementation. How do you implement? So, we talked about the goals, and the priorities earlier, and we want to increase our efficiency, our effectiveness, and our productivity, and we talked about those before. And then we want to implement by managing our lives using this YES tool. What is YES? So, we have to manage You, ultimately is managing you not just the time. It's really your own self-discipline and self-control that matters. And ‘E’ is to execute this time management skill that we talked about in the last 14 sessions. And then self-care will come back to that a little bit. Very important. When you take care of yourself then you can take care of other people. That’s our YES tool.
Finally, ‘M’ is motivation. We would be motivated when we aim for success. Yet when we look at the success, it's like an iceberg. You may see just above the water level, the glorious, wonderful success. And yet underneath the water level, there are a lot of hard work, sacrifice, perseverance and good healthy habits, like our time management. So, we want to be motivated toward that big iceberg, both above the water and below the water level. And remember motivated to manage our three partners in our life. Our yesterday, that we learned from the past, and build on failures, so that we learn from the mistakes and not make the same mistake again. And today, we manage today proactively and prioritize, align to our goals. And then we manage our partner tomorrow, that we plan and aim for the right goals and priority. And that way, we live a life without regrets, not wishing I would have, should have. So, we have been motivated to manage the three partners, then we’ll live a fulfilling, integrated and so-called balanced life, that every day is a full life and every day it's a gift. And next couple of sessions we’ll talk more in detail and give you some examples for my life.
So, after we AIM, we want to have the BEST time management principles, where we want to make our best effort and very conscientious in planning what we want to do every day every week, every month. So, it's well aligned to our goals and our priorities. And then we want to have empathy how we spend time in building relationship with people, really feel how people feel. So, even with the same amount of time, how we build relationship with people makes a big difference. If we express empathy to build relationship in a trusted, caring way and how we communicate and cooperate, that gets a good use of your time. ‘S’ is to stick to the priority with focus, so we are not distracted, we're not procrastinating. ‘T’ is the time to relax for the self-care and wellbeing and we’ll come back to this more as well. So that's a good way to remind us to be BEST in our time management principle.
Finally, the TIMES. How do we have good TIMES in managing an aiming for the best work-life balance? How do we do that? So, that is a summary of what we've done in the very beginning of our series. ‘T’ is the time management for work life rhythm. That's our final two sessions we're gonna talk about. It's not balance, it's really a rhythm. How do we build healthy rhythm? So next two sessions in our final conclusion, we’ll give you examples on how to do that. And that will give us a good performance in our life. ‘I’ is important to do what the right thing is and using the right way. Otherwise, your time is wasted. You're not doing the right thing. You're not using the right method.
‘M’ is missional life. So that when we live our life, we have a mission, clear understanding of our goal. Remember, this five ‘P’ model as listed in here that we know our purpose, we know the people we interact with and how to interact with them. We have the principle that we clearly defined, how to make decisions, our passion that we enjoy what we do with our time, then we'll get good performance. So that would be a purpose driven life with good mission. And that all of us, except for pastors, we are all bi-vocational. We have vocation for work, and we also have a calling for God's kingdom that we serve. So, both of these are in our life mission. That way, you’ll feel very fulfilling and it's a purpose driven life.
And ‘E’ is to establish healthy habits. We’ll keep reinforcing that. And that's part of our rhythm. And that way we can manage our time and our stress in a very healthy way. Finally, our spiritual influence. Because it's all about our foundation, our relationship with God that align and build our spiritual health. And that give us the source of wisdom, source of energy, source of joy, that we can develop the joy at home, and joy at work. So that is our best TIMES that we can aim for.
So at the end, I want to share a tool with you. There's a QR code, and there's a website you can go and take a quick quiz to see how well you are managing your time. And these are the questions that are asked. And the response will be 1: not at all, 2: rarely, 3: sometimes, 4: often, 5: very often. So, these are the questions that you'll be asked. The task I work on are the ones with highest priority. Two, I try not to complete task at the last minute or ask for extensions. Three, I set aside time for planning and scheduling. That's a good thing. Four, I know how much time I spend on each of the various tasks I do. So, you can allocate the list of things you do according to your priority. Five, I find myself dealing with interruptions, not so good huh. Six, I use goal setting to decide what task and activity I should work on. Seven, I leave contingency time, the buffer time, the margin, the white space in my schedule to deal with the unexpected and surprises.
The next set of questions, and the final one are… Eight, I know whether the task I’m working on are high, medium, or low value. Very important. Nine, when I’m given a new assignment, I analyze it for importance and prioritize it accordingly. Very smart. Ten, I’m stressed about deadlines and commitments. Eleven, distractions do not keep me from working on critical tasks. That's very good. Twelve, I have to take work home in order to get it done. Thirteen, I prioritize my to do list for action plan. Which is a good thing. Fourteen, I confirm my priorities with my boss, always aligned no surprises. Finally, fifteen, before I take on a task, I check that the result will be worth the time I put in. Very smart.
So, these are the 15 questions. And then you score them according to 1 through 5 based on your responses. And you add up your score. Total, 5 × 15 is 75, that’s the maximum score. My score is 55. What is yours? That gives you some idea. If you're 15 to 30, then you are not so good in managing your time. Ouch. The good news? It's a good opportunity to improve your effectiveness and your long-term success. So, you need to be careful how to improve. 31 to 45 points. You're good at some things, there’s room for improvement somewhere. So, focus on serious issues, and then you’ll most likely find to become less stressful. And then if you're in the top score, which is 46 to 75, and mine is 55, then you are managing your time very effectively. But still check what you need to improve and tweak it and get it even better. So, you can see the detail in the website. So, congratulations. We have completed a good review of all the key tools that we learned and principles on time management to be effective. And we'll come back next time, see you.
Reflections:
1. Have you ever felt anxious and depressed because you couldn`t "balance"?
2. Looking back on your past life through Teacher Kung's sharing today, have you seen and felt different rhythms at different stages?
3. What are your priorities in life at this stage?