“This is the beginning of a new day. God has given me this day to use as I will. I can waste it or use it for good. What I do today is important, because I am exchanging a day of my life for it. When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever, leaving in its place something that I have traded for it. I want it to be gain, not loss; good, not evil; success, not failure; in order that I shall not regret the priceI paid for it”. –Author Unknown.
Generally, one of the most common forms of stress that people feel when embarking on a new project, be it starting a business, working, setting and achieving goals, discovering and fulfilling their purpose, etc, is the feeling of overwhelm: there’s far too much to do and not enough time to do it. In fact, this syndrome, which I refer to as ‘time poverty’, is the single biggest problem facing most people in the world today. Twenty-four hours are no longer enough. We never have the time we need to do all the things we want and need to do and we always want ‘more hours in a day’. This is a pandemic problem, and added to that, the continuous stream of billions of bits of information that we are constantly bombarded with in today’s society, our time has become even more invaded, and ironically, because there are far more opportunities now, it can make you feel dizzy not knowing what to do and what not to do. And then you freeze and do nothing – very effectively. Sometimes people bite more than they can chew in an attempt to make ends meet, and with so much demand on their time, they end up in a maze of confusion.
The solution…
To this problem of work overload and general information overwhelm is, become an expert on time management and prioritization. There is probably no other skill that you can learn that will give a *better return on time invested* than to know how to effectively use and leverage your time. After all, the world’s top billionaires work no more hours than you. As a matter of fact, everyone has the same 24 hours in a day – you, me, Dangote, Adenuga, Bill Gates, Fashola, Mr. President, etc. However, what you get out of those 24 hours depends entirely on how you spend them.
We always cry that there isn’t enough time in a day to accomplish all that we would like to, but contrary to popular opinion, there is! The problem is most people try to do too much in the time available or they don’t plan properly how to spend their time and so they end up wasting time. It’s all too easy to be busy without being productive. Many times, we get to the end of the day and even though we have been occupied the whole day, we really have no achievements to show. The truth is you have been ‘busy’ doing nothing. So, the two indispensable keys to time management are: 1) your ability to set priorities, and 2) your ability to concentrate single-mindedly on one thing at a time, never moving to the next until the more important task is completed. When you manage your time effectively, you can achieve more by doing less, by focusing on your priorities. You see, there’s never enough time to do everything that needs to be done, and so continually setting priorities on your tasks is critical, and then the discipline to focus on that task without interruption. According to Brain Tracy, the best question you can ask and continue to ask yourself is, ‘What is the most valuable use of my time right now?’
The quality of your life is reflected by the quality of your questions. This question, ‘What is the most valuable use of my time right now?’ will do more to keep you on track, hour by hour, than any other single question in the plethora of time management strategies. Before you can begin to manage your time effectively, you need to know exactly what you want and where you are going. You need to have clear goals.
Startwith your TOP priorities…
Proper time management begins with planning. Taking a moment everyday to plan your time and day in advance will help you achieve so much more. Planning is a good time management tool and it is temptation of procrastination (which is the number one time management problem). Once you know what to do and when to do it, you have no excuse for procrastination. And one of the keys to effective planning is to first discover what you do with your time on a daily basis. Get a notepad and record everything you do with your time on a daily basis for a week. The results might shock you. Once you have taken stock of your daily activities, you can then re-strategies by applying the 80/20 rule. This school of thought believes that 80 percent of the results you achieve come from 20 percent of your efforts. So, you have to focus on the 20 percent. ‘To know and not to do is not to know’…
So, here are two things you can do right now to get your time under control: first, make a decision today to become an expert on time management. Read books and listen to audio programmes. I personally recommend Brain Tracy’s stuff, great value and very effective. Then, practice them every day until you master time management skills. Successful people are masters of time management and leverage. Second, set clear priorities on your tasks each day, THE NIGHT BEFORE you begin your day. You end the day feeling that vital closure, and importantly, you don’t waste any hour in the morning scrapping that list together. Then, discipline yourself to start on your most important task and focus on it under it is done. Overwhelm will reduce to almost zero, and as long as your are prioritizing on importance and not comfort, your life will change immediately. Over the next couple of weeks, I will take time to analyse and dissect the different problems of time management and the causes. Then we’ll look into the strategies for dealing with the problems. “Time is really the only capital that any human being has, and the only thing he can’t afford to lose.” –Thomas Edison. “Until you value yourself, you will not value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.” – M. Scott Peck.
To your success!
Have a great week!
NB: First published February 2014