Have you already mortgaged all your available time?
We mortgage our time when we say yes to a project.
If we say yes to too many projects, we can create a huge debt, more than we could ever get done with the new time we get.
There are catastrophic strategies. We may have a breakdown. We may declare time bankruptcy and walk away from our lives.
Or we can start into a process of refinancing, renegotiating deadlines, deciding what the minimal acceptable quality is. As part of that, we can ruthlessly eliminate the time leaks (which helps with time income) and we can refuse to take on any more time debt.
I would like to flesh this out further, but I can’t. I have time mortgages of my own I’m paying down.
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Hi Jon,
I definitely understand that feeling, and an interesting concept you used: mortgaging your time!
I’ve been feeling the crunch myself lately. The past several weeks I’ve been watching how I schedule my monthly tasks. I realized that I had a habit of scheduling everything towards the beginning (projects, client tasks I’m responsible for, networking, etc.). I’ve begun to spread things out and assign each category to a better part of the month. It’s challenging, and I’m still working on it!
I hope you will be able to create a better space and schedule for yourself as well. I’d love to hear if you came up with new methods of balance!
Have a good weekend,
Tracy
Tracy, two tools I use to keep better in balance are my project folder and my weekly planner. I explained the project folder here and the weekly planner here.