There are 1,440 minutes in a
day. That is all we have. Nobody gets more than that, whether he is king in his
kingdom, president of a country, a clerk in a office or a sweeper in a street,
everybody has same 1440 minutes in a day.
Time is not a renewable resource, time once elapsed never comes back. So
you need to find ways to make the most of what you have. What you do and do not
do determines your level of success. The way you manage your day determines
your success. When we are young with
limited responsibility, we think we could do everything; but as you get up in
years, you become more protective of your time than ever.
This reminds me of a beautiful
words from a Chinese author and philosopher Lin Yutang on time management, he
said “Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of
leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non- essentials.”
Your ability to think strategically about your day will make an enormous difference
in your productivity and efficiency. Highly successful people are experts in
managing their time and priorities.
Expertise in time management
is not a rocket science and we do not need to go to school or read 50 books to
get the expertise. You just have to master five practices as given below:
1. Plan each day before it
starts. “Never begin the day until it is finished on paper,” Jim Rohn Said.
“Either you run the day or the day runs you.” Every
minute you spend in planning saves you as many as ten minutes at the time of
execution. It only takes a few moments to diligently plan your day, but this small
investment will definitely save you hours in wasted time and efforts. While
planning the day, you can figure out the main event of the day and decide which
one things will determine the success for the day. With that answer in mind,
you can approach the day with focus and purpose.
2. Schedule your priorities.
All items on your to-do list do not hold equal weight in value or
importance. Most people schedule their days with a mix of high and low value
activities. Do not let the low-value ones hijack time and mental energy. Identify
your top priorities. Then put them in your calendar before anything else. Your
productivity will go up tremendously the day you start prioritizing. Prioritizing
also helps in preserving your values. For example, you can prioritize family time
in your schedule ahead of any business related priorities, if your topmost
value is importance to family.
3. Just say no. Everything
you do is something you have chosen to do, whether you are conscious of it or
not. Some people have difficulty in accepting this truth, but your life is what
you are making of it. If you are frustrated, exhausted, overwhelmed, there is a
good chance that you have not said no often enough. It may feel uncomfortable
to say it, but every time you do, you make room for a yes that really matters.
4. Expect the unexpected.
Even when you have a scheduled your priorities first and say no regularly, your
time management effort can still get derailed. Do you receive phone calls that
divides your focus? Has anyone dropped by to say a “quick hello” that lasted
for ever? Has a crisis caused you to drop everything? You would have answered
yes, yes, yes for sure for all the questions. Even with the best intentions,
you can find yourself subject to someone else’s agenda. Don’t let the
unexpected get you off track. When possible, carve out blocks of time when you cannot
be interrupted on your priorities. Work to create margins in your life so that
when the unexpected happens, you are able to deal with them.
5. Apply the 80/20 rule to everything.
One of the most helpful concepts for managing a schedule is the Pareto
Principle, also known as the 80/20. Rule. Just to re-iterate this rule is named
after an Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, the rule says that 20 percent of
your activities will give you 80 percent of your results. This means 20 percent
of your customers will account for 80 percent of your sales, 20 percent of your
products will account for 80 percent of your profit and 20 percent of your team
will account for 80 percent of the group’s success. In turn, you should spend
80 percent of your time on the vital 20 percent of everything you do. If you
have a 10-item to-do list, tackle the top two with the majority of your might.
If you have 20 staff members, spend 80% of your time with the top four and so
on. Do these things, and your productivity will improve dramatically.
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If you are not sure whether
these habits are paying off, then spend few minutes each evening reflecting on
the day. Consider what you learned, how
you used your 1,440 minutes, and what you could have done differently. By
analyzing what went well and what did not, you can identify productive and
unproductive patterns in your behavior.
In the end, it is not what you
think about, talk about or intend to do that shapes the life you lead. It is
what you actually do each day that determines your future. Your schedule speaks
about your day. And how you spend your time is how you use your life.
You can’t make up for
lost time, but you can use it more efficiently.
Source: From the works of John C Maxwell, Robin Sharma, Brahmarishi Guruvanand Swami ji
