How do you shape a day?
Everyone, of course, is handed the same 24-hour canvas to work with each day. Just as clearly, not all of us choose to use it the same way.
Making sense of our own time is the first skill: understanding our own rhythms, planning activities, meeting deadlines, and all the rest.
But managing others’ time is a real art. Especially if they are many, and most especially if they’re not instantly accessible.
A group’s needs and wants are rarely the same — or satisfied in the same way — as our own. Where we might want more freedom and flexibility for ourselves, the agenda-less meeting is often a miserable experience for all.
At minimum, it’s worth learning the arts of time-shaping well enough to avoid wasting others’ time or being artificially pressured. Better still, it’s worth learning to create the feelings of momentum, tension, and release that people want to feel.
The person who knows how to manage time usually wins the day.
Colin Steele 