Audit Yourself.
Audit WHAT you are doing.
Audit WHERE you spend your time.
Audit HOW you feel.
Audit WHETHER your daily actions matches your annual plan, your 5-year plan, or your 10-year plan.
WHAT IS AUDITING?
Auditing yourself is a way of intentionally analyzing and evaluating your life, your routines, your habits, your thoughts, and determining what is important to prioritize, change, restructure, or stop doing.
Are you happy? Are you doing something you enjoy?
Who are the good people in your life? Do you spend enough time with them?
What’s changing? What would you like to stay the same?
What are you doing for others?
What’s next?
How is your routine? Do you have the right balance of structure and spontaneity?
Thinking about these things is so important because you can go an entire lifetime WITHOUT thinking about them.
Many times in life, traumatic, sudden or unexpected events in your life can force you to confront these issues. But if you don’t have those events happen, you can cruise through life on autopilot.
You hear about midlife crises, sudden changes in careers, and complete 180s on people’s life trajectories.
And sure, that’s one way to do it. But what about designing your life for yourself and your wants.
AUDITING IN TIME MANAGEMENT
Everyone only has 24 hours a day. The most productive person is still working with 24 hours a day just like the least productive person.
So what you do during those waking hours becomes vitally important. Being consciously aware and intentional with your time is the only way to controllably influence that.
Think of it like a financial budget.
Budgets are supposed to be flexible, to build in buffer room, to allow you to know how much money you are spending, where you are spending it and whether that is money well spent on things you actually want. It also helps you know when you are in credit card debt, how to pay it back in a reasonable way and how much money you are saving for future long-term needs.
Auditing your time is similar. It can be flexible, allowing you intentionality in your time allocation, knowing how much time you are spending on each aspect of your life, where you are spending it and whether that is time well spent on things you actually want to develop or focus attention time towards. It can also help you know when you are overextending your time on fruitless endeavours.
IMPLEMENTATION
Based on what you figure out about your time management and use of time, you can recalibrate and re-prioritize your time.
Want to spend more time developing your relationship with your spouse, your parents, your children, your friends? Carve out time for that.
Want to spend more time working on your health? Time block for exercising, meditating, yoga, or a run.
This lofty design is the foundation of good habits and routines.
Then blink your eyes and a month has gone by and you’ve reshaped your life. Sure, it’ll still be hard but you’ll have a planned time for each of the things that actually matter.