Incongruent activities are big obstacles in terms of time managemet. A big time management mistake people make is that they allow incongruencies to exist in their lives without ever consciously resolving them. This is very easy to see when it comes to religion. People claim to hold certain beliefs as sacred, but they fail to act in accordance with those beliefs. They hold back or label themselves as weak. Why? Because part of them feels those beliefs are correct, but another part of them feels they’re not. But instead of resolving this conflict, they try to avoid thinking about it. To resolve the incongruency would likely cause serious upheaval in their lives, and they fear what might happen. So instead they go through unhealthy cycles of hiding the truth from themselves and feeling frustrated with their inability to meet a standard which they don’t fully agree with but which they feel they must continue to follow.
The upheaval caused by resolving internal incongruencies is real, but that doesn’t mean you must fear it. I’ve gone through some major life changes as a result of pursuing this path, and it’s hard every time. But I cannot accept the logic of clinging to a belief system that I know to be inaccurate. Once new data presents itself (or a new understanding of old data), I have to find a way to integrate it. At the very least, I must drop the incongruent beliefs while I search for better ones.
Despite the challenges, I’ve been extremely pleased with this approach. Problems that I struggled with for years simply evaporated once I adapted my beliefs to fit my own experience instead of blindly accepting what others told me. The world is full of so many false beliefs (especially from mass media), so it becomes a serious challenge to trust ourselves and our own thinking when everyone around us is telling us we’re wrong.
For example, one of the first beliefs I found to be inaccurate is that people need a job. Although I have a job, I believe that some people can live without being employed. Let’s talk from their standpoint. Part of them feels they should get a job — it seems like the right thing to do after college — but another part of them don’t like the idea of having to go to work each day and have a boss tell them what to do. They look at a job application and just stare blankly at it. They can barely stomach the idea of working on their resumes. The whole idea just feels intuitively wrong to them. And there are a lot of people out there in this feeling, but most people do their best to tune it out. They go to work each day, but they don’t really like it. They’d rather not go to work if they can afford to do so. And, instead of accepting this incongruency like some of them seem to, others chose to resolve it. And this leds them to find a way to make a good living without a job. It is not an easy path in the short term, but it can be much easier in the long run. So, this is a nice example for an incongruency.
The ultimate simplification of time management is that time management is accuracy. In order to use your time effectively, you must strive to create the most accurate understanding of reality you can. This means giving adequate consideration to all the data that presents itself to you: sense perceptions, facts, logic, intuition, emotions, etc. And the ultimate goal is to bring all of these things into alignment. So what you perceive, feel, think, say, and do are all congruent.
