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Book Review: Time Mastery by John McLachlan and Karen Meager

I was struggling for a suitable illustration for this blog post as I read the book on my Kindle so couldn’t take a photo of the book itself – credit goes to my husband who suggested a photo of his TARDIS money box. After all, who wouldn’t want a command of time travel technology?
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February 27, 2019

People who know me will know that I never seem to have enough time and I’m always trying to fit in far too much ‘stuff’ into the time I have, so I was quite mortified to read:

“If someone is too busy, it is not a badge of honour. It is an indication that they are finding it hard to prioritise and manage their life”

Ouch!

I was introduced to Time Mastery by Nina Mayler of Mayler Management Coaching through a keynote presentation at a Women Mean Biz networking event, I then read the book and had a follow up coaching session with Nina which was really useful. I found the book very thought provoking and full of relatively simple ways to change thinking patterns and associated actions.

Alongside the book is the Monkey Puzzle Training website which has some really useful quizzes which helped me identify my ‘Time Processing Type which turns out to be “Small Chunk Themer” (who knew?!) the book then goes on to explain various techniques to make the best use of the time, money and health resources you have, depending on the ‘type’ you are.

As a working parent there is almost always a constant battle between the contrasting priorities of family and work, both of which seem unrelentingly demanding. The phrase ‘work / life balance’ is bandied around almost everywhere and this book made me realise that ‘balance’ is almost entirely the wrong word:

“Time is waste either in worrying about one of them whilst trying to do the other, or trying to balance them off against each other. You end up doing neither very well”

This book provided ‘rhythm’ as an alternative and this has been really useful to me:

“You cannot balance your work against your life, that doesn’t make sense. Work is part of your life and you decide in the rhythm of your own life how big that part is”

As well as (rather belatedly) realising that I can’t do everything, I have started to be much more realistic and honest about what I can achieve in a given time frame and I hope I am communicating this more effectively to my clients and everyone around me.

I think ‘Time Mastery’ will always be an area for me to develop and reflect on due to my determination to do and achieve as much as possible and the constant limiting factor of there only being 24 hours in a day and even I need to sleep for some of those!

P.S. there is a bit of a theme developing with these Book Reviews, Get Your Sh*t Together was the first one and Getting Things Done will be coming along shortly (as soon as I’ve had time to read the book and write it of course).

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