Manage your time well

If you’re run off your feet, always late and full of anxiety, with never any time to do the things you love – stop, quiet your mind, and think.

Manage your time well
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Time is the most democratically allocated resource. Everyone gets 24 hours a day, so never say you don’t have the time.
You have exactly the same time available as Michelangelo, Charles Dickens, Einstein and Bill Gates. What matters is how you use it. “Until you can manage time, you can manage nothing else.” Wise words from the father of modern management, Peter Drucker. However, he wasn’t entirely correct, because time management is nothing but self-management, and totally under your control.

READ:Don’t forget to pay Freshmark Systems

Your daily ‘what-to-do’ decisions and, more importantly, your ‘what-not-to-do’ decisions, will determine your success or failure in life. When you’re feeling stressed and out of control, lock your door, turn off your phone and shut down your computer.

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Think: what am I doing wrong? What do I need to change?

Get out a pen and paper and start organising and prioritising, because these are the fundamentals of effective time management. No matter how intelligent you think you are, put it in writing. This is not something that can be done in your head. The discipline of writing it all down is essential in effectively implementing successful time management. But wait – before you get to the detail, make sure you have the overall perspective right.

Get your priorities straight
To begin with, there are essentials, and health is at the top of the list. Without it, you are of little use to anyone or anything – your family, your friends, your work and yourself. Everything flows from health, and it is important to exercise regularly, have routine medical examinations and eat the right food. Next comes family. Are you in the habit of leaving for work before the kids wake up and getting back when they’re in bed? If so, it’s time to change your habits.

Read to them before bedtime, and remember that weekends are for the family. Then there’s work, which is undoubtedly important. But don’t ever forget that it comes third.

What’s urgent – and what’s not
With these three priorities clearly in your mind, get down to the detail of planning your life by applying the acid test of what’s urgent and what’s important (see Exploring Steven Covey’s Matrix). Every day, set aside 15 minutes of uninterrupted time with yourself. Review and diarise your schedule for the upcoming week, prioritising health, family and work – in that order.

Postpone or delegate anything you regard as urgent but not important, and drop anything you regard as not urgent and not important. You should end up with only the ‘not urgent’ but ‘important’ tasks. Today’s digital diaries all have daily and monthly facilities aimed  at processing and prioritising your time, setting up concise and functional to-do lists – but what about the ‘stop-doing’ list?

Here is your opportunity to free up productive time and although it may not seem so, it’s a much more important exercise than setting up your daily to-do list. At least every quarter, review how you’ve spent your time and ask yourself some difficult questions: Was that job necessary at all? Did it add value to me, my life, my job?

Could someone else have done it?

Depending on the answers, ruthlessly cull all activities that add little value or which can be delegated. Think long and hard about the work itself. What operations/sections are adding value and which ones are not? Are certain offices/departments unnecessary or unproductive? Could you do without them?

It’s good business to kill unproductive non-profitable activities.

A sound and restful sleep 
A good night’s rest is essential to avoid stress. Yet how many of us lie awake worrying because we feel anxious, overwhelmed, under pressure and disorganised?  We’re concerned about a task we didn’t get to that day, and which job to begin with the following day. Keeping a notebook next to one’s bed and scribbling down issues making one’s head spin is useful in quieting the mind. Try it, you’ll sleep like a baby.

Such is the power of the to-do list: a simple exercise, but one of the most powerful ways of organising yourself and reducing stress.  And remember that while time flies, you are the pilot, and you have the joystick and throttle in your own hands.

This article was originally published in the 29 August 2014 issue of Farmers Weekly.