Time Management

So how do you do it all? Are you healthy?

Do you know the level of details that you need to work through? Do you know your own limitations? Do you know the level of resources or pieces of equipment that you need to complete the tasks that you have for now, for the short term and for the long term? Do you know a pathway through those without becoming overwhelmed? Why? Is it because this is not new to you. That you’ve been doing this for a long time and you have the thinking skills to work it out as you go. Do you also have the resources that you need? Do you also know how to say no. Do you also know how to say yes to help? Do you also know what type of help that you need in the appropriate level of detail to make your ‘jobs’ successful. Do you have people around you who are supportive of your personal health? Of your personal life goals? Of your personal life work balance? Or your personal interest? If yes – If no – why not? Do you know where to find people who think like you? Do you see those around you who are exactly like you or do you live in a city or in a country that doesn’t ‘fit’ with you? Where is it that you would prefer to live?

Are you able to measure how big tasks are? Their complexity? The level of details that it will take to get them completed? Or are you continually being surprised that you didn’t know something. Do you then have more to learn about something and about putting yourself into situations where you don’t know what to do? Do you need to learn to measure in advance or predict better what will happen based on what your experience of success has been in the past. This ability to feedforward is essential for time management when moving into new environments or managing new tasks or situations where the dynamics are constantly changing or shifting in weight or value. Without knowledge of all of these parts it will be hard for you to regulate yourself, which may have impact on those around you.

How many skills are you able to use at once? Do you know when to bring them out and use them or when to pause that particular skill and use others? Once you start a sequence of skills do you need to follow them all to completion or are you able to hit the pause button and go in a different direction. Knowledge of the amount of time that a skill takes to complete a task using that particular skill can have significant benefit in managing overall demands that come from both internally and externally. How long does it take to clear a particular level within a console game? Do you know in advance how long it will be or are you just ‘certain’ of how to complete the steps and ‘know’ that you can and ‘will’ achieve it? What happens if you don’t? What happens if someone else interrupts you? Are you able to regulate yourself then emotionally? Are you able to work out how to pause the game? Does the game pause anyway? And if not, are you able to not let that add to the increase in emotional overload that not being able to tidy something up when you need to adds to how overloaded you are.

Being able to regulate yourself across each area requires knowledge of your skill and the task skill across each area of those tasks and of your own skills. Or are you still learning? Just like everyone else. How many of the kids can cope with such extraordinary challenges being placed in front of them or the daily demands for how long it takes them to complete simple tasks. So what happens if we make the tasks easier. Do the regulatory levels improve across those individual tasks and then across the build up of those tasks over the course of the day? So what happens when the entire day is easier? When the entire week is easier?

What difference do you see in your kids or in the parents when its school holidays or a break from regular programming? Do things calm down more? Are there less self harm behaviours or aggressive behaviours towards others? Assessment of these types of routines and environmental contributions to regulatory levels when there are so many different types of tasks to pay particular attention to ensures that the individual can be supported well. The timing of holidays is important to pay attention to. How many of us count down the days or the weeks or the months til something will come? Can you hold yourself together til then. How much of the need to have advanced information is so that I can prepare myself to ‘cope’ or to ‘tolerate’ what is happening around me so that I have a confirmed solid reminder of when it will be done. What then happens on the holidays can still be work, but at what level? Do you interact with others or do you have quiet time to yourself? Is that on purpose or is that planned?