Time Management

Very often, we hear people saying, “ I want to do this but I don’t find time.”? It was Henry Ford who said, “The busy man has time for everything.” When a person says that he/she has no time what it really means that he/she is not able to manage his/her time. Time-management is life-management. One who manages her/his time can manage her/his life.

When a person really wants to do something she/he will definitely find the time to do it. The way lies in prioritizing the tasks on hand. The most important task should get priority no. 1. This way, one should prioritise the things one wants to do in order of their importance. The least important task should be the last item in this list.

Stephen Covey, author of First Things First, narrates the story of a speaker who demonstrates as he speaks to his audience about filling a bucket with rocks, gravel, sand and water. He first puts rocks into the bucket and asks, “Is the bucket full?” The audience says, “Yes.” Then he puts gravel into the rock-filled bucket and watching him, people realize that the bucket can take more. Then he puts first sand and then water into the bucket and declares that the bucket is full. The audience realizes that it truly is full only now! Stephen Covey explains that if one tries to fill the bucket in any other order, not as many rocks, or as much gravel or sand could have been accommodated.

In this story, our time is the bucket and the big rocks are the most important tasks; the next important things are the gravel, sand and water in that order. If we start with filling the bucket first with water, sand or gravel, we would miss the most important thing, the rocks. The lesson of the story is that we should first arrange tasks on hand in order of their importance and start doing the most important task first. (Here we need not waste our time over the thought that if one first fills the bucket with water, the bucket can still take rocks, gravel and sand and the excess water will flow out. 'Water' here can be treated in a different sense and we can ignore this normal nature of water.)

If we do not prioritise the tasks, we shall miss out the important things.

Another way of managing time is to arrange things to do in order of our control over them. The item over which we have no control, for example the rush-hour traffic, should be on the top and the item over which we have full control should be at the bottom. We should try managing the time of items over which we have full control and move up to the next upper item, so that we will have some elbow-room while attending to tasks in situations over which we have no or least control.

The 80-20 Rule can be applied to time-management also. Eighty percent of the things we do in a day have only 20 percent value for us. Twenty percent of the tasks on our hand have eighty percent value. Hence we should concentrate on these 20 percent of the tasks, which should be our top priority. These are like the rocks in Covey’s story. If we fill our time first with ‘water’ or ‘sand’ in the story, we shall have no time left for the ‘rocks’, which give us eighty percent value.

In the present day of information-explosion and our unceasing accessibility thanks to mobile phones and communication-revolution, the demands on our time have increased manifold. Hence choosing what we can and should ignore has become one of the most important tools of time-management.

So throughout the day, ask yourself: What can I do now, which would be the most useful and beneficial this moment?

SOME TIME-SAVERS:

1. When we go to some place where we know we may have to wait for some time, like going to the airport or railway station to receive someone or visiting our doctor or our hair-dresser, we can carry some light reading material like magazines which we plan to read, so that the waiting time can be gainfully utilized. The hair-dresser or the doctor may be keeping some reading materials to keep  the waiting customers occupied but these may not be of much use to you even if you read them for ‘time pass’ which will be really 'time-kill'.

      2. While traveling in a bus or car, which may not be suitable for reading, utilize the time for     

           thinking or planning.

       3.  Remember the Store Management Principle  PEEP - a Place for Everything and Everything in its Place. The second part is more important, everything in its  place.

So, keep back everything in its place after using it.   Arrange things in your kitchen, on your study table and in your office room properly and uncluttered, so that you don’t have to waste time searching for things. While working in my garden, I use different tools, big and small. Sometimes, due to laziness I would place the tool wherever I would be working and would forget to bring it while  leaving the spot. Because of this, sometimes I temporarily lose small tools and have to waste a lot of time searching for them. On one occasion, I found a lost small tool after about a year!!! It had got embedded under the earth and resurfaced when I dug the spot for some other work.

In the same way we have 'lost' some household items at the time of some of my several transfers when I was working with my Bank. We usually found these at the time of my next transfer!                        

4. In office, follow the principle that you don’t have to see the same paper twice. Dispose incoming letters the first time you see them.

5. Do not postpone doing things. Remember the saying, ‘Jo kaal karna hai, aaj karo; jo aaj karma hai, abhi karo’. (Do today what is to be done tomorrow; do now what is to be  done today.)
6. Do not postpone; just do it. 
7. Never put off till tomorrow, anything that you can dump for ever. 
8. Nothing gives you more free time than being punctual.    
 

TAIL PIECE:

Q. What is the meaning of the word ‘procrastinate’?.

A. I shall look into the dictionary tomorrow.

2. a.I am going to stop putting off things - starting from tomorrow 

     b.Boss to subordinate: "Procrastination isn't your worst problem. I like it when you put off  
         your mistakes till tomorrow." - Cartoon by Randy Glasbergen