Speaking as a time management junkie... someone who has become obsessed through necessity and habit, with wringing "something" out of every spare minute... oops, did I say spare minute? I don't have any of those since I became a time management junkie, I meant to say obsessed with wringing something out of every minute.

Anyway, since I have become obsessed I have made an important observation. I am stress free and at my most successful when I give myself permission to take the time to do things that are important, and even more successful when I allow myself the time to do them right.

Remember that phrase, "ALLOW MYSELF THE TIME". There is a lot of power in those words and it's something that too many of us don't allow ourselves anymore.

Repeat it 3 times every time you feel stressed and pulled in umpteen dozen directions at the same time. Establish your true priorities, and then allow yourself the time to do what needs to be done. Anything less will result in stress and disappointment.

Attempting to micro manage our time can have disastrous results, although we are putting out gargantuan effort to do exactly the opposite.

Slotting something for every minute, with no allowance for over time, obstacles or anything else that may come up results in a back up of tasks, none of them completed. And the only good task is a completed task. Anything else is just a waste of time.

Allowing our priorities to become a mess, results in… you guessed it… a messy life.

And if I've learned one things since my own life has become more challenging through the years it's this - "Mess is Stress".

So finally, one day I was really amazed to see myself creating a "mess" by withholding permission for myself on important things in the name of what I thought was efficiency.

Cleaning my house is the perfect example of a mess gone wild.

I have perfected a system that works perfectly for me when I use it. I am overjoyed within a few days of using it, it's nothing short of a miracle for me.

But incredulously to me now, I waffled on the time slot that was working because it was taking up valuable work time when my mind was at it's best. A major, well known principle of time management is to do your thinking work during your peak mental hours.

So I decided to change the time and try a few different things with disastrous results - there's that word again!

Why? Because I had taken away the permission that I had granted myself to make my home the priority for one measly hour every morning.

Certainly, in a perfect world, I would be able to jump on my laptop and get down to serious business every morning as I please.

But in the real world I have other, more important things to take care of first - like the dishes. (somehow that just sounds wrong, but it's importance suddenly moves on up the food chain when the kids get home asking me for a clean bowl!)

What do you need to give your self permission to do?

A daily half hour to rejuvenate yourself… maybe to read or soak in the bath tub?

Permission to say no to someone?

Permission to schedule an important, but not urgent job into a regular time slot (this is where house work falls for me, until it becomes urgent, at which point the stress and guilt levels reach an all time high which could have so easily been avoided had I ALLOWED MYSELF THE TIME)

If your life seems out of whack, it could be because you need to allow yourself the freedom to do what needs to be done, not what you think you should be doing, or even worse, what you think other people think you should be doing.

Think about it. The result could be an amazing change in your life.

Now I better go and clean my house! I'm allowed :0)