Stop looking for it. You ARE living it. You decide every day to live it in certain ways, not the others. From the time management perspective, your life is a sequence of big and small choices and decisions. It is those choices that you really manage, not the flow of time. That's why making your decision consciously is the key element in time management. You will notice right away that these simple "need/want" questions will make a tremendous difference in the way you live.

Note, that even though the first question is more important than the last one, you should not cut the things that are neither important nor urgent but simply fun. I, for example, enjoy reading mystery novels. At first I tried to justify them by telling myself that I'm expanding my vocabulary or releasing stress, but in the back of my mind I still felt guilty. I don't anymore, because I stopped lying to myself. I’m reading my mystery novels, just because they are fun for me. That's enough. But if I have something important I need to get done, I can postpone reading for the next day.

Technique #3: The Key To Motivation

No one has to force themselves to do fun things, but what about what about the unpleasant tasks?

The key here is your motivation. If you are internally motivated, you won't have to trick or force yourself into performing a task. I want you to pay attention to the words "internal motivation". Let me share a simple, but brilliant motivation formula.

The more motivation comes from the external source (your family, boss, friend, math teacher) the less likely you will do it.

When you are constantly forcing yourself to do thing you hate doing, the result will be minimal, because you will be chronically putting it off or procrastinating.

Procrastination is an art that the whole human population has been performing for the thousands of years. During that time we had created tons of reasons to justify the procrastination. Here are the two most common ones:

* Waiting for the right mood

* Waiting for the right time

Tell me how often are you trying to pull that excuse off? I'm telling you, it's getting old... Will there ever be the right time or the right mood? Maybe you are just chronically putting off an activity, because you simply aren't sold on doing it at all.

Reasons for that may include:

1. You don't think it's your job.

The most common example is that your relatives expect or demand you to get into the family business. For example, they want you to go to the Medical school and become a dentist. You hate that!! The sight of blood is enough to make you dizzy and you are disgusted by the thought of getting your fingers into somebody else's mouth. As a result you will be constantly procrastinating with getting your education and, honestly, I can't blame you for it.

2. You think it's somebody else's job.

Your wife bought a new mirror for the hall and wants you to hang it. Yes, you do have the hammer and you could have bought the right hook for it. But do you want to? No! Last time you've used the hammer you smacked your finger really hard. The memory of it still hurts. It is only natural that this task gets bumped down your list over and over again.