TIME is an important factor to cope with in the demanding lifestyles of the modern adult living in a large highly organized society. It goes beyond the regular considerations that you can find in any time management book, course, lecture, or article for the secular business professional. There, you will have already learned that to manage your time efficiently you have to

• set goals
• establish priorities
• maintain a written schedule
• delegate work to others
• organize your information
• keep contact data handy
• define health enhancement breaks.

GOALS:
In the business and career world, there is a common saying that those who plan succeed and that those who don't plan, plan to fail. Almost every time-management document or course, other than this one, will make it an urgency and requirement that you empower your Ego, sometimes your SuperEgo, to take control of your life (future). You will be told that you must have an image of what you want your success to be and that you should motivate your Ego, or SuperEgo, by placing pictures referencing this goal on your walls, desk, in your car, in your briefcase, and in your pocket.

Inevitably, they are all fixtures of materialism: cars, money, power, wealth, real estate, power toys, social acceptance and fame, a desired "form" of spouse. You are then further encouraged to heighten your Ego, or SuperEgo, domination by telling yourself frequently that you will do whatever it takes to reach those goals. The end will justify the means.

Some pseudo-spiritual individuals and organizations, some of which are referred to as New Age, will confidently impress you with their magical believe that if you simply follow their routines, formalities, customs --- you will automatically grow rich. The book, Think and Grow Rich, is just one example of this belief that a repetition of magical processes as defined by a human researcher studying how the rich became rich and the powerful became powerful --- focuses on the physical reality with an almost mystical reverence for the Humans who have succeeded in such ways. What the millions who have read the book and taken the courses are almost totally uninformed about is that ALL of the human mentors originally chosen and studied as a background for the book either went to jail, died broke, went insane, committed suicide. All their billions and all their power did not bring them satisfaction and contentment.

For the Spiritually-Guided person, his or her goal in life is to become the person which God intended them to be. This acknowledges that God wants every person to reach a state of contentment through a fulfillment of their life mission which is an extension of the features of their Basic Personality. Anyone who truly follows Spiritual Guidance for any period of time will see how that Guidance assists them in making decisions and taking actions which add a quality to their lives which is often described as miraculous. As the Judeo-Christian 1st commandment states, if you make a commitment to follow God (Spiritual Guidance), you cannot have any other god's of higher priority. You cannot serve two masters. You cannot be in the water and on the beach at the same time. You have a choice.

For the person beginning to follow Spiritual Guidance, it will be easiest to follow a schedule of Most Important Actions for each day. This is simply because you do not yet have the skill developed to be able to efficiently request Guidance on a moment's notice, regardless of distractions, and immediately receive it. So, in order to participate in the physical reality around you effectively, you must be satisfied with obtaining confirmed Guidance from a person more adept than you once a day, or more, and/or using a portion of your time concentrated in the Spiritual realm. A failure to succeed in this low involvement state prevents any development of dependable improved skills that would allow for more frequent, faster, and more immediate questions and answers. Simply put, if you cannot control the interference of your Ego and your SuperEgo and you will not provide strength to your Personal Spirit and Unconscious through consistent practice and commitment, you are wasting your time.

Time is wasted, spiritually, anytime a person chooses to follow anything other than the Spiritual Guidance which is available for them. Time is not spent on real opportunities; it is wasted on Ego-(seems plausible) and SuperEgo- (should be), and Unconsciously-perceived (well, it was last time/the other times) choices. Failures of actions, inactions, being too early, arriving too late, expecting the irrelevant, hoping for a fantasy --- all cost your time.

PRIORITIES:
In a business and career setting there are often multiple possibilities and many activities which can favor reaching the goal we have set. Trying to carry out everything at once usually ends in anarchy and confusion such that everything is left incomplete and often in a position that is more detrimental than if we had done nothing.

Often, the anxiety created by an overeagerness to do a favorable activity first and leave the less liked ones until last results in hesitation and procrastination until it is too late to carry out the requirements of the decision: the opportunity has passed. The boss asks us to take a letter down to the postbox to meet the pickup. We want to have our coffee break first. While we could easily have reached the postbox, put the letter in, and returned to continue with our coffee break, we get distracted. As we are getting onto the elevator, a friend calls out to us. We step back into the hall, let the elevator go, and wait for our friend. They arrive. We take the time to explain that old crusty wants us to run an errand so we will be over to the cafeteria later. Then we wait for the next elevator.

It is now in the height of the office break period so the elevators are slow to come and slow to go down to the ground level. We meet other friends on the elevator. In our preoccupation of speaking with them, our mind drifts. We absent-mindedly get off the elevator on the cafeteria second floor in order to complete a conversation we have started. Suddenly, we remember the request, and, its back waiting for the elevator for the third time. We reach the ground floor and quickly walk to the street mailbox to meet the once-a-day morning pickup. As we reach it, we notice the postal pickup truck turning the corner --- on its way to the next pickup. We were trying to carry out our group of activities according to our favored and less favored goals. With no priority, we have messed up both the timely delivery of the letter to the box and our taking a full relaxed break.

When we have multiple tasks and/or responsibilities to carry out, we can save time wasted as in the above example by setting and following clear priorities. That is, we can grade each of our tasks according to the risk and the reward. Which one carries the greatest impact of failure or success? Which ones have more flexible time durations in which they must be completed? Which are the ones that we know how to do and are proficient at? We can be reasonably assured as to how much effort and skill and time they will take so we can budget closely for that. Still others will be new to us or carry uncertainties. We should allow extra time for those, as a precaution. Perhaps when we add the times we think all of our tasks will take, we end up short of time. Maybe that is an indication that we should either delegate some of the tasks to others, or, request that we be allowed to do them at another time.

A Spiritually Guided person will set the main priorities of his or her day according to the Guidance they receive. As their goal is to follow the Guidance offered, their is no conflict between what is easy or desirable (Unconscious), what they consciously think would be most rational (Ego), and what others have asked them or told them they should do, or what they feel is their duty (SuperEgo) to do. Before the other means of expression of their identity start raising possibilities, the decision is made. Their Higher Self knows why a certain order is advantageous. It is not a question so much of priority, as in the sense of importance, so much as it is a question of what is most efficient.

It happens often enough with my schedules of basic activities for the day that the priorities appear to be rationally confusing, even contradictory. After my first few such occurrences, I learned to just follow through and admire the Intelligence behind the Guidance. I may have a day of using public transit to go to appointments, pick up packages, provide or use services, and obtain information from 8 locations around the greater metropolitan area.

The rational way to plan my day would be to draft out what would be the easiest, shortest, fastest continuous route to follow. Then arrange the highest importance activities such that they can be easily met along this route in one direction or the other. This logically shortens the time taken for the whole trip as well as minimizing the cost.

When my Guided "priorities" differ from logical reasoning, and they usually do, they ALWAYS prove out in the carrying out of them. I have two stops to make on one side of town but I am Guided to do them at widely different times --- forcing me to travel back and forth across the city. That journey may take 1-1/2 hours one way. I find that when I attend to the earlier activity, it is on time, as expected. The second one, which is now way down the list and requires backtracking, is to pick up a package.

It was supposed to arrive much earlier, yet, when I arrive 4 hours later than I could have logically been there, the delivery has just been made within the past 10 minutes. The event that I attended across town between these stops and others, was an unadvertised sale for an item I was Guided to buy from a store I usually don't go into. It had been placed on sale, with limited numbers, within about 7 minutes before I entered the store. At least that is what the clerk said. The other activities also prove their place as the day unfolds. Who is losing time?

SCHEDULE:
An ordered list of our expected activities is easily arranged once we have our goal, or goals selected, our priorities set, what should be done first, second, third, and so on. If we get a delay at one point, we may decide to proceed to the next point and then return to the troublesome one when the conditions are better or more suitable.

We may be more flexible and easier to contact if we have a schedule.
With a schedule, we can provide others who work with us or who may wish to contact us a suggested route and an approximate connection between activity and time of day. If we have periods during the day when we have unscheduled time and a client calls the office and requests that we drop by to answer some questions for him or her, the office may be able to offer them a tentative time or two and then confirm that time or times with us. Otherwise, the client must wait until they can contact us personally, or, have our office contact us and then wait for us to contact them when they are in. Time rearranged, or, time wasted?

For the Spiritually Guided person, the schedule of activities is instantly and constantly updatable. Traffic delays happen suddenly which may last for seconds or hours. Even listening to traffic reports on the radio may sometimes be inefficient. If you are near where the transformer exploded, accident happened, or water pipe broke, you are likely in the traffic tie-up before it is on the radio.

On a number of occasions, I have been travelling by car between points A and B, when my Guidance has suddenly indicated to alter my route. When I have been able to follow the local events on the radio, I usually hear 5 or 10 minutes later, or an hour, that a traffic delay happened minutes after I turned from my original route --- at the spot I would have been at. By responding quickly, I avoid the tie-up, and, the corresponding local grid-lock that will develop quickly afterwards as everyone seeks alternative routes. We waste less time.

Other people have choice.
They may choose to stay longer at an earlier appointment and have to cancel the one they have with you at the last minute. I have been Guided to phone their office before leaving for our appointment to confirm, only to have their assistant inform me that the person I was to meet is running late and perhaps we should rebook or advance the time. Always, the other party is grateful that I have not arrived and been frustrated by their absence and that we have been able to negotiate a good conclusion before the situation became an urgency for them.

Just as easily, the person may have chosen to eat something for lunch or breakfast which later upsets their digestion and forces a last-minute postponement. Our Higher Self knows. If we ask often enough and at the right time, it will advise us as to whether the meeting is still on, or, that we should check, or even, that it is cancelled but we have yet to be informed. We have more efficient time use.

DELEGATE:
Any efficient manager will delegate whatever work they personally do not have to carry out. If there is not someone on staff who knows how to carry out the task and it is required on a regular basis, the effective manager will ensure that someone receives the training to do it.

An Ego-dominated individual is often an inefficient manager who feels that only he or she can and must do any activity requiring authority or it won't be done correctly, their way. If someone else is allowed to do the task, they are afraid of losing out on the credit. They are going to make all the important decisions, take all the risks, make all the effort, and, hopefully, glean all the glory.

This inherent lack of trust and patience in others means that all the questions are answered before anyone has a chance to voice a concern. And the answers are usually expressed in such a way that everyone gets the feeling that Mr. or Ms. Leader only wants them to carry out their responsibilities in a functionary manner. After all, they won't get any credit, encouragement, or training --- so why make an effort. So, Mr. or Ms. Leader gets exactly what is predictable --- technicians working to rule.

The Super-Ego dominated individual represents the other major style of inefficient manager. They will spend a great amount of time and effort confirming that the way that they or the staff are performing a task is the most perfect according to all of the reports that the experts have written and allowing for all the personal errors others have cautioned them about and the errors they have cautioned others about.

Since the spiritual dimension of relevance is not taken into account, what worked for MZD Company in 1956 in Australia and what worked for ABT Company in 1988 in Poland may be contradictory. Great effort may be expended trying to get a meld of two differing solutions of which, eventually, each of the older efforts and the melded new proposal are ALL failures. Much time and money go down the drain and out the window. People get frustrated. Anger flares. Maximum effort is required to find a workable solution.

Both the Spiritually Guided and the Assertive manager respect their weaknesses. They set a suggested maximum time on their task efforts before beginning them. They first identify if it is necessary for them to do the task personally. Is there a better qualified person who can be asked to carry out the task? If they will need to learn skills to do the task effectively, they will ask someone else to help them this time. They may ask the other person to take over for them while they concentrate their efforts on training for the next time. They may take a few minutes to read through the instructions available to prepare themselves. They may try the task a few ways to see if they can carry it out without assistance. If they have tried several attempts, they may ask, patiently, for Guidance, or, ask an associate for assistance. If they have given a fair effort, without progress or completion, AND, have devoted some quality time to following the obvious options, they will note what they have tried and the difficulties they have encountered and report this to their superior, or mentor, or coach.

The self-awareness of the assertive person allows them to set personal limits.
They stop before they get angry. Everyone who is motivated and experiencing difficulties becomes frustrated. It is then a question of how they cope. The key to coping with anything is to have a strategy. The strategy for the Spiritually Guided person is to focus on their goal, determine the relevant steps, find out the priorities, structure the details into a flexible order, try, learn, ask, research, delegate or re-try.

ORGANIZE:
All of the elements listed here are cumulatively important.
If you exclude an earlier one, you will likely find that the house will crumble and fall down. The longer the duration of the task, the more repetitive that it is, the more effort that is required to accomplish it, the more resources that are required to complete it --- the more necessary it is to organize.

In regular business and secular approaches to being successful in an endeavor, you organize your supplies and your participants or the wasted time accumulated by the errors and indecisions of each person to each task multiplies. A customer comes to pay their bill. You can't find their invoice and they did not bring their copy. Another person put the receipt book away apart from where it usually is. The last person working on the desk before you came took away the only pen. When your supervisor does come over, she lends you a pen and tells you in which cabinet you should be able to find the invoice.

But another person, who is on lunch has put the file in her drawer because she is working on it and did not want it out in plain sight while she was away --- and, was too lazy to refile it temporarily. Everyone gets frustrated and angry and 45 minutes and the attention of 3 persons are eventually required to resolve a simple transaction that ordinarily could be done in 7 minutes.

A person who is learning to be Spiritually Guided must also be organized. The person who has learned to have dependable Spiritual communication IS organized. Being organized indicates that you are serious about doing something which others find complex in as efficient a way as you can make it. Until a person is proficient at any skill, they have to practice. The person learning any skill knows the equations:

• More practice = better skill.
• Better skill = faster and more accurate performance.
• Greater accuracy = greater contentment.

Most persons that I have met have Basic Personalities which are more attuned to stability. That means that you have every potential to reach a dependable communication with your Higher Self much faster than I did, a higher likelihood of stable long-term health. If you want it, you will not get it overnight.

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