Managing your time between work and home can be learned through time management training. Successful people have acquired skills in their work lives over time that they can also use in their marriage or partnership. Essentially, this means that people who are good at their job also have a good chance of making their relationship work! The ingredients for good performance at work are the basic commodities of time management training, energy, enthusiasm, and determination - exactly the features of a great life partner. Strive to make a good relationship with these ingredients.
One key element for making work skills and time management training usable in your private life is to rethink what you do with your time. It's been proven that 20 percent of your projects bring 80 percent of the success. It's true that you cannot always know in advance which 20 percent will be the rewarding ones. However, in the case of many projects, you can say with a reasonable degree of accuracy which will be among the unsuccessful ones. There is one advisor who has a better feeling for these matters than you do - your life partner.
You should allow your partner to help you with time management training more than you have so far. He or she is more rational than your colleagues. Your partner knows the ways in which you tend to waste energy; your partner knows your strengths and your long-term objectives. In your time planning meetings with your partner, ask him or her to refrain from making any emotional comments ("You're going to that stupid trade fair again?"); instead your partner should ask you targeted questions like the following:
- Will that be something worthwhile to schedule?
- Would you do that even if you were allowed only to work six hours per day?
- Will it benefit both of us?
- Which old projects would you give up for this future project?
Of course, relationship-based time management training means spending time for a joint planning meeting. But you can be sure of one thing: those conferences will be one of the most important in your life! Many people go to one meeting after the other, but when it comes to their marriage, they think it will just work by itself without any arrangements.
You need to regard every time management training investment in your job as critically as you evaluate financial investments. If your employers could not raise the finances for particular projects, you would never think of paying for them with your own money. Apply the same principles to time management training issues. Too many people regard their private life as a time management training resource, which they can steal without a thought when bottlenecks happen at work.
