Time waits for no one!

Time is the great equalizer… Each day has only 24 hours - nobody has any more than anyone else. Everyone, from poets to presidents, fills those hours, one after the other, until they are all filled up. Every single minute is unique, and once gone, can never be regained.

We often come across a well-known phrase ‘Either you run the day, or the day runs you’. It is rightly said because each and every moment in our life is time. No matter how much we strive, delegate and engineer for efficiency, there are only 24 hours in each day. We are unable to manufacture more time, and once a moment has passed, it is beyond retrieval.

When you look at someone who has accomplished a lot, you can be pretty sure that he or she has spent considerable amounts of time mastering the required skills, filling hours upon hours with hard work. There are those who look at others’ accomplishments and say, “I had that idea, “or “I could have done that.” If you don’t invest the time needed to achieve those goals then all you have are empty ambitions.

William Penn: “Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.” 

Proper utilization of time is necessary for one and all. Time management is one the pivotal factors to achieve success in any field. It is essential for our personal as well as professional life. Time management teaches us the patience that no school or college can teach. Not only this, but also how to tackle the difficult and different situations in the given span of time. This tells us that an individual who is skilled at managing time efficiently is always ahead of the ones who lack this skill of time management. For instance, to be healthy one must manage one’s time effectively by dividing equal time for work, sleep and exercises.

I Don’t Have Time! 

Have you ever thought to yourself, “But I don’t have time to set goals! I’m too busy working!” It’s probably true that taking the time to set goals now will cut into the time you’ve reserved for other activities. But in the long run, it’s one of the most effective time-saving strategies you can pursue. It simply isn’t possible to maximize the use of your time if you don’t have a clear idea of what you’re trying to accomplish—both short term and long term. Carving out a small amount of time each week to devote to reviewing your goals can work wonders for providing the focus you need to allocate your time productively.

Schedule your time appropriately

Even the busiest people find time for what they want to do and feel is important. Scheduling is not just recording what you have to do (e.g., meetings and appointments), it is also making a time commitment to the things you want to do. Good scheduling requires that you know yourself. Using your time log, you should have determined those times during the day when you are most productive and alert. Plan your most challenging tasks for when you have the most energy. Block out time for your high priority activities first and protect that time from interruptions.

An analysis of your time allocation experiment results should include:

1. The two most time-consuming activities in your daily work life.
2. The two most time-consuming activities in your personal life.
3. The two activities most surprising to you in how much time they consume.
4. The two activities most surprising to you in how little time they consume.
5. An honest appraisal of which activities you feel should consume less of your time.
6. An honest appraisal of which activities you feel should consume more of your time.

The conclusions drawn from this exercise, and from an honest assessment of time management style, should aid in identifying those areas of professional and personal life that could be most benefitted from change.

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