From The Gazette - April 17, 2000
Time Can Be On Your Side
We have been granted life and time, although none of us can say how long a life or how much time. And doesn't it seem we spend so much of that time putting out fires – lurching from event to event requiring our immediate attention?
The challenge is to accord important things the priority they deserve and reserve second place for everything else.
Of course, if we were better at it, we wouldn't need people like Susan Portnoy, a Montreal organizational consultant who shows people how to use their time most productively.
Portnoy is an incredibly well-organized person – someone who is never looking for her keys or dashing, late, to an appointment, because she always allows herself enough time – read more than needed – to get somewhere.
Learning time management is about more than keeping an agenda. It is learning a whole different way of looking at time. Most people don't live their lives with a purpose, said Portnoy; they don't have a game plan.
An example is New Year's resolutions: people know what they want and why, but not how – one reason these resolutions so often don't work.
Portnoy's philosophy is that she works at what she wants every day. She's on the treadmill daily, for instance; she practices Hebrew for 15 minutes each day because she is determined to improve her reading.
"I have an awareness of time. A lot of people are slaves to work, to the phone, to making more money. They don't enjoy their life. They are not balancing."
Ask yourself: Am I spending time on things that are going to benefit me, and my family?"
A good deal of what Portnoy teaches, privately and in workshops, is common sense (which, most of us realize, is relatively uncommon).
For instance, why wait until morning to start doing all that you need to do before leaving the house? You can't eat breakfast the night before, but you can prepare lunch, get your papers or your computer together, decide what to wear. "Your level of functioning is so much different if you are calm," she said. "An efficient person does things right; an effective person does the right things right."
Some things need to be sacrificed for others that matter more, if your life is not going to be taken up with trivialities. "You have to really be clear about your needs," said Portnoy. "It's not about being a wimp when you say no. Most people are afraid to say no. I know my limits: I never felt bad saying no. My time is precious."
Portnoy is a mother of four, and while the rest of the family isn't quite as organized as she is, her behaviour has rubbed off: records of university application forms and other relevant documents are now easily retrieved. And this year her husband had his income-tax return ready for the accountant by April 2. "A milestone," she said.
Portnoy keeps a master to-do list, and a list that changes daily of what to do the next day. "I always have 50 things to do and I'm never pressured." She is never working down to the wire because to her, anticipating an occasion like a dinner party or a holiday gathering, preparing and setting the table, is part of the pleasure.
And the excitement of anticipation is contagious: your family feels it, everybody comes to feel more a part of a team. And to be appreciative. "It's a major thing for kids to know there is always food in the fridge, that their toys are always ready," Portnoy said.
"I know people whose home environment was not predictable. It prevented a part of their social development that I think is essential for children."
But no one gets organized overnight. "It's a process," Portnoy said, one you have to be motivated to start. Ultimately, organization is but a means to an end, she said: being organized is worthwhile only if people are having fun, if they're using what they have learned for good and happy things.