If this popular adage "Time is money" is true, then the use of time is what separate the rich from the poor, the successful ones from the failures. One of the greatest single problem that people have today is “time poverty.” On a regular basis, you have to stand back and take stock of yourself and what you’re doing. You have to stop the clock and do some serious thinking about who you are and where you are going. Taking action without thinking is the cause of every failure.
Your ability to think is the most valuable trait that you possess. If you improve the quality of your thinking, you improve the quality of your life.
Time is your most precious resource. It is the most valuable thing you have. It is perishable, it is irreplaceable, and it cannot be saved. It can only be reallocated from activities of lower value to activities of higher value. All work requires time and time is absolutely essential for the important relationships in your life. The very act of taking a moment to think about your time before you spend it will begin to improve your personal time management immediately.
Personal time management begins with you. It begins with your thinking through what is really important to you in life. And it only makes sense if you organize it around specific things that you want to accomplish. You need to set goals in three major areas of your life.
· First, you need family and personal goals. An intangible goal would be to build a higher quality relationship with your parents and siblings. Achieving these family and personal goals are the real essence of time management, and its major purpose.
· The second area of goals is your academic and career goals. How can you develop the skills and abilities to stay ahead in your academic and future career?
· The third types of goals are your personal development goals. Remember, you can’t achieve much more on the outside than what you have achieved on the inside. Your outer life will be a reflection of your inner life. If you wish to achieve worthwhile things in your personal and your academic and future career life, you must become a valuable person in your own self-development. You must build yourself if you want to build your life. Perhaps the greatest secret of success is that you can become anything you really want to become to achieve any goal that you really want to achieve. But in order to do it, you must go to work on yourself and never stop.
Questions To Ask For Better Time Management
There are three key questions that you can ask yourself continually to keep your personal life in balance.
· The first question is, “What is really important to me?”
Whenever you find yourself with too much to do and too little time, stop and ask yourself, “What is it that is really important for me to do in this situation?” Then, make sure that what you are doing is the answer to that question.
· The second question is, “What are my highest value activities?”
In your personal life, this means, “What are the things that I do that give me the greatest pleasure and satisfaction? Of all the things that I could be doing at any one time, what are the things that I could do to add the greatest value to my life?”
· The third question to ask is, “What is the most valuable use of my time right now?” Since you can only do one thing at a time, you must constantly organize your life so that you are doing one thing, the most important thing, at every moment.
Personal time management enables you to choose what to do first, what to do second, and what not to do at all. It enables you to organize every aspect of your life so that you can get the greatest joy, happiness, and satisfaction out of everything you do.
Time Management Time Table
I remembered some years ago counselling a senior civil servant who complained to me about trouble in her life I traced to her lack of the knowledge of the Word of the Living God we also call the Bible. While encouraging her to consecrate time for her spiritual growth, she told me that as a single mother, she was too busy and had no single time to herself. I quickly brought out a piece of paper and that is how I came out with this 24hours time table.
After filling out the time table, to her greatest amazement she discovered that she had left about 6hours she could not account for. Since that incident, I always recommend this simple exercise to those who struggle managing their time.
Setting Priorities
The essential key to success in setting priorities is having a long time perspective. You can tell how important something is today by measuring its potential future impact on your life. Setting priorities usually requires sacrificing present enjoyment for future enjoyment, It requires giving up a short-term pleasure in the present in order to enjoy a far greater and more substantial pleasure in the future.
So setting priorities begins with your deciding what you want most in life and then organizing your time and activities so that everything you do is the most valuable use of your time in achieving those objectives.
With your larger, long-term priorities in order, you can much more easily decide upon your short-term priorities. You can say that the process of setting short-term priorities begins with a jotter and a pen. Whenever you feel overwhelmed by too many things to do and too little time in which to do them, sit down list all those tasks you need to accomplish. Although there is never enough time to do everything, there is always enough time to do the most important things, and to stay with them until they are done right.
Once you have listed your tasks, ask yourself this question: “If I were to travel for a month, and I could finish only one thing on this list, which one thing would it be?” Think it through, and circle that one item on your list. Then ask yourself: “If I could do only one more thing before I was called out of town for a month, what would it be?” This then becomes the second thing you circle on your list.
Perform this exercise five or six times until you have sorted out the highest priorities on your list. Then number each according to its importance. With these priorities, you are now ready to begin working effectively toward the achievement of your major goals.
Another popular method for setting priorities on your list, once you have determined your major goals or objectives, is the A-B-C-D-E method. You place one of those letters in the margin before each of the tasks on your list.
“A” stands for “very important; must do; severe negative consequences if not completed.”
“B” stands for “important; should do; but not as important as my ‘A’ tasks, and only minor negative consequences if not completed.”
“C” stands for “nice to do; but not as important as ‘A’ or ‘B,’ and no negative consequences for not completing.”
“D” stands for “delegate, or assign to someone else who can do the task in my place.”
“E” stands for “eliminate, whenever possible.”
When you use the A-B-C-D-E method, you can very easily sort out what is important and unimportant. This then will focus your time and attention on those items on your list that are most essential for you to do.
Once you can clearly see the one or two things that you should be doing, above all others, just say no to all diversions and distractions and focus single-mindedly on accomplishing those priorities.
Much stress that people experience in their lives comes from working on low-priority tasks. The amazing thing is that as soon as you start working on your highest-value activity, all your stress disappears. You begin to feel a continuous stream of energy and enthusiasm. As you work toward the completion of something that is really important, you feel an increased sense of personal value and inner satisfaction. You experience a sensation of self-mastery and self-control. You feel calm, confident and capable.
Here are six ideas that you can use, every day, to help you set priorities and to keep you working at your best:
1. Take the time to be clear about your goals and objectives so that the priorities you set are moving you in the direction of something that is of value to you. Remember that many people scramble frantically to climb the ladder of success, only to find that it is leaning against the wrong building.
2. Develop a long time perspective and work on those things in the present that can have the greatest positive impact on your future. Maintain your balance in life by setting priorities in the areas of your health, your personal relationships and your financial goals.
3. Make the commitment to improve those aspects of your life that are most important to you. As a student, you need to improve in your academics and develop better relationship with your teachers. As a Christian, you need to know God better, as a child, you can learn how to bring more joy to your parents and siblings.
4. Be sure to take the time to do your work right the first time. The fewer mistakes you make, the less time you will waste going back and doing it over.
5. Remember that what counts is not the amount of time that you put in overall; rather, it’s the amount of time that you spend working on high-priority tasks.
6. Understand that the most important factor in setting priorities is your ability to make wise choices. You are always free to choose to engage in one activity or another. You may choose a higher-value activity or a lower-value activity, but once you have chosen, you must accept the consequences of your choice.
Keys To High Performance
Action Oriented: Men and women who accomplish tremendous things in life are intensely action oriented. They are moving all the time. They are always busy. If they have an idea, they take action on it immediately. On the other hand, low achievers and non-achievers are full of good intentions, but they always have an excuse for not taking action today. It is well said that, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
Self-discipline: it is the most important single quality for success. Self-discipline means that you have the ability, within yourself, based on your strength of character and willpower, to “do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.” You need self-discipline to delay gratification. Persistence is self-discipline in action
Character: it is the ability to follow through on a resolution after the enthusiasm with which the resolution was made has passed. It is not what you learn that is decisive for your future. It is whether or not you can put your head down and discipline yourself to pay the price, over and over, until you finally obtain your objective
Commitment: When you make a firm commitment to achieve a particular goal, and you put aside all excuses, it is very much like stepping on the accelerator of your subconscious mind. You will be more creative, determined and focused than ever before. Great men and women are those who make clear, unequivocal commitments and then refuse to budge from them, no matter what happens.
Completion: is the second ingredient in peak performance. There is an enormous difference between doing 95% of a task and doing 100% of a task. In fact, it is very common for people to work very hard up to the 90% or 95% level and then to slack off and delay the final completion of the task. This is a temptation that you must fight against. You must continually force yourself, discipline yourself, to resist this natural tendency and push through to completion.
No comments:
Post a Comment