Time Management

Take control of your time – It’s Now or Never!

When I was in school, I used to play, play & play and still used to have a lot of time. I used to get bored and then fall asleep; sometimes to eternity. When I moved to college, I had a lot of time to while away with friends, roaming round the city. There is a sudden change in life when I started my corporate career. As usual it was an MNC so the work was quite hectic; no time to eat, no time to sleep, no time for friends, very less time for bath! What was happening? Ask me, I was working. Working, working and working. How can a person work so hard for so long? Why not; we are building our careers and each one of us need were asked to exhaust the last available gram of weight, ounce of water and damn of oxygen from our body. I did that, many of my friends did, am sure many are still doing it, while I write this article.

Then why do we need to worry about Time Management when we had all the time in life? Why is time so relevant all of a sudden? I fell into the fallacy called “better future in the corporate world”. Many fall in it (Not sure how many people can it accommodate). Personally if you ask me, yes it helps to an extent, but you actually start living in a false world. Your work becomes your world, rather your only world. You get sucked in the day to day business of your company that you will lose few years of your life. You realize this only after a long time, when you would have lost quite some ground. Then there are 2 sets of categories people choose to move to: Accept what has happened and continue the way they live and keep doing the same thing. The other realizes that there is life beyond corporate life and start recouping the lost time. Again, why are we talking about Time Management here when there is no great relevance to availability of time? Because, time is anyway lost in both cases.

Let me give you an analogy: A young man who starts working with a reasonable salary starts investing right from day 1 of his work. Gets married but keeps saving for the future. After 20 years they realize they missed their honeymoon. They now have money to spend an entire month in a cruise liner, but they missed the time for this activity. Whereas another gentleman who started with similar salary went out for an expensive holiday after marriage and started saving only after 10 years. After 20 years he has no regrets, though slightly lesser money, but he did what was required at the hour. Live life! But, again where is the relevance to Time Management for whatever we discussed so far?

Well, I believe that life is nothing but accumulation of moments. Moments of truth, false, dare, fear, happiness, sorrow and many more. Time is measured in moments. That’s the relevance. That’s all the relevance. That’s to me is a big relevance. Life is not just working, eating, sleeping or doing anything else. Life is just living and living at that moment. If you don’t live that moment, you are not living; you are either dreaming about future or thinking about the past. If and only if you are living that moment, you are living. Else you just exist. Like a tree exist, a human lives. That’s a huge difference to me and should be the same to everyone.

The difference is that when you start living, you will start enjoying your life. When you start enjoying you will realize and feel life. Only when you feel it would you unfold the huge potential of one’s life. That’s true happiness! Only when you start enjoying the true potential of life would you have the zeal to have it more. That’s when you start asking for more time. More time means planning and planning is Time Management. You need to manage your time so that you start enjoying your life more and more. You will start asking for the 25^th hour in a day; is it possible? Well the answer is no, but there are ways to get more time per time. There are many theories, tools, concepts designed by many great people across the globe. One such theory that’s world famous is what I will explain in detail. I have modified the concept to ensure my readers could not only understand the concepts better, but also implement very easily. 

The below mentioned Time Management concept:

Ø  Explains the importance of Managing Yourself.

Ø  Helps you know Your Self.

Ø  Helps Plan Your Day.

Helps you find your Areas of Improvement.

The 4 Ps of Time Management:

Now need to watch closely all your day to day activities and start placing in the four boxes (Quadrants). Let me explain the 4 Qs in detail:

First P (Q I) - Prefer it – Do it fast.

Second P (Q II) - Pay for it – Do it without fail; or get someone do it for you even if you have to pay for it.

Third P (Q III) - Procrastinate it - Do it later. Not important now.

Fourth P (Q IV) - Push it – Don’t do it. Avoid it.

You should be able to place any task that arises in your average day under one of the four Ps. That’s planning. Planning for a better YOU.

The most funny part about time management is that when its not done properly, you not only waste your time but end up wasting others’ time as well. You end up getting into losing temper, losing contracts with your customers, get into bad relationships, etc. While you might gain your own self later, the damage cannot be drawn back. You cannot win that customer back, set right the relationship lost with your colleague or partner. The impact is big and at times irreversible.

What I recommend to all my readers is that nothing is permanent. As time ticks by every second, everything that’s lost can be gained. All you need is proper planning and execution. Keep the end objective in mind – Think BIG, Start SMALL. Success is round the corner and it’s just waiting for you to open the door!