2019 Time Management Skills: When Values and Needs are in Conflict

Time Management Skills: When Values and Needs are in Conflict

Steven B. Zwickel, 

August, 1991 (rev'd 2019)

Values

As children, we are given a set of values by the adults in our lives. Our parents (and others) teach us right from wrong, good from bad, and acceptable from unacceptable behavior. This system of beliefs about the way things “should be” becomes part of what is called a person's “values system.”

Values systems are very important:

• They give us a moral basis for our lives;
• They offer us ethical guidance;
• They provide us with a standard for measuring fairness;
• They set expectations on our behavior.

The different value messages we get about time management may include:

• It’s only common courtesy to show up on time
• It’s OK to be late even if you don’t have a valid excuse; people will always wait for you
• It’s never OK to be late
• You must never put off to tomorrow something that you can do today
• Procrastinators are unreliable and rude
• It’s OK not to respond to an invitation; people don’t really expect you to respond and something more exciting might come up if you wait
• Invitations require responses; if you say you will be somewhere and don’t show up, that’s extremely rude
• Most deadlines are merely suggestions

Needs

In addition to a values system, we each have our own set of psychological needs.   Needs are not given to us the way values are; they are part of who we are from the moment we are born—they're part of our biological and psychological anatomy. Some needs, like feeling thirsty or needing sleep, are very basic. others are much more complex, like a need for financial security or a need for personal privacy.

When your values are in conflict with your needs, the result may be a high level of anxiety, confusion, and emotional pain. Once you are aware of a conflict, you will find that there are several ways of resolving it. Working with a competent counselor can help. In fact, psychotherapy is an excellent place in which to attempt to resolve these conflicts. It is also possible for you to work things out for yourself. Here is one example of how such a conflict might be resolved:

A young woman from a highly-educated family was in a quandary. When she came home from college after her Sophomore year, she had a long talk with her mother.

"Mama, I’m doing well in school, but it’s time for me to declare a major subject and I don’t know what to do. I know that you want me to finish college and go into some profession, like law, medicine, or teaching. I also know that I don’t want to spend the rest of my life cooped up indoors. I love being outdoors. I love nature. I don’t know what to do.”

Her mother wisely refrained from arguing with her. Instead, the two of them went through the college catalog until they found an academic field that involved working out-of-doors.

The young woman's values said: “stay in school. Become a professional.” At the same time, she felt a need to work out-of-doors. Luckily, she found a way to resolve this conflict.

How does this relate conflict between needs and values relate to time management? A person who gets anxious before going out in public needs reassurance and may stall until they get it. The same person may value being thought of as considerate and kind: not someone who keeps other people waiting. The conflict for this person is between the need to feel OK before going out and the value placed on being punctual and reliable.

People sometimes use love-relationships as a way of resolving these conflicts between needs and values. They get involved with a person who represents a polar opposite value in order to have a way of working through the conflict.

For example, had the young woman described in this anecdote decided to go into an “indoor profession”, like law or medicine, she might have a found herself in a relationship with a man who worked and recreated outdoors, even if he came from a dissimilar social background. The relationship would provide her with reasons to spend more time outdoors —where she really wanted to be!

The problem with these relationships is that some people use them to get their needs filled without admitting it. So the subconscious message the chronic procrastinator gets is: “She'll keep me on time”. The high-speed Type-A person thinks, “He'll show me how to relax more.” These polar opposites can drive each other nuts!

Opposites Attract

People sometimes find these characterizations of different types of people and how they manage time—the Jets vs. Horse & Buggys, the Dawdlers vs. Scurriers—interesting (and amusing) because they accurately reflect their own families and love-relationships. Yet the potential for serious conflicts is so obvious that it raises the question of why people with opposite styles get into love-relationships with each other.

The answer is that people use their love-relationships as tools for managing their time. To understand the dynamics of these relationships, we need to look for a moment at some of the psychological factors involved. Some people choose a particular lover because they sense that that person can help them resolve some internal conflict.

Take the fellow who is always running late. He doesn't like being late, but he doesn't feel that he can change the way he handles time. When he meets a woman who is always on time (or even a little early) for everything, he finds her very attractive. If they fall in love and want to have a good relationship, how will they reconcile their different styles of handling time? There are any number of possible outcomes:

• They may never resolve their differences. They may fight and argue over who did what, but they never find a solution. Sometimes he will make her late, and sometimes she will force him to be on time.
• They may sit down and try to analyze their behavior—why is he always late? Why does she have a need to be punctual all the time? They may find that the whole question of timeliness is a symptom of more serious problems in their relationship. It may be that they need to work at being more sensitive to each other’s values. Or they may decide that this is not an issue worth fighting about and choose to ignore each other’s style.
• They may actively work to try to change each other—one trying to get the other to be more responsible, while the other is attempting to convince the first to be less compulsive.
• They may reach a compromise agreement to head off future conflicts. Perhaps they will decide that each will be only responsible for getting where she or he needs to be in a timely fashion. Or they may decide that they follow her time-line when going to “her” events and his when going to “his” events.

Where do you go from here?

You talk about the issues raised by the conflict between needs and values. Here are some questions to get the conversation started:

• Do you think a relationship between people with opposite styles of handling time can succeed? Is it a deal-breaker or can you negotiate to find a solution?
• Can you ask your love-partner to help you resolve these conflicts? What if they say no?
• How can you make changes in the way you handle conflict with your love-partner while still showing respect for each others’ feelings? 
• What happens to a relationship where people can't discuss conflicts like this one?

And here are some ideas for solutions (all of these require open and honest discussions):

• Take separate cars: arrive (and leave)  at different times.
• Discuss what needs to be done ahead of time and promise each other to start at a particular time. Promises must be sincere! 
• Determine how much time each of you will need to prepare and respect one another’s different timelines. No sarcasm; no demeaning remarks or put downs.
• Not every job is a rush job. Find a way to weight the items on your to-do lists so the important stuff gets done on time.
• Agree on a list of what needs to be done, deciding who will be responsible for each task and discussing how long you expect each task will take.

Hardball
Beware those who turn a disagreement over how to manage time into something much bigger. They may be playing some kind of psychological “game” to get their needs met at the expense of the relationship. Some issues in resolving these conflicts that may be games are commitment, sincerity, and maturity. 

• People who are truly committed to a relationship will make the effort to find an acceptable compromise. They have insight into their own limitations—what they can and cannot tolerate—and know that not every issue is a deal-breaker. Someone who is not really committed to the relationship will make no effort to find a solution.
• Sincerity is an issue in any situation where people’s self-esteem is on the line. These are called “ego-involvement” issues and they go to the core of a person’s value system. An insincere promise to solve a problem of this type can be seen as a betrayal of trust and end the relationship.
• People who play games instead of trying to solve problems often have maturity issues. Creating an uproar over something trivial, distorting the main issue so that it becomes a metaphor for something unrelated, or using the disagreement to attack the other person identify the way some immature people handle disagreements. A person who says, “That’s it. I’m outta here.” is merely using the disagreement as an excuse for acting-out behavior.