Managing Time for Maximum Effectiveness

People and businesses fail most times not because they do not have other things set in place to assure of success. But most people whether in their personal or professional do not experience a tremendous amount of success because they lack the most essential skill for success which is proper management of their time. Businesses that do not have a tab on how its people are making use of the company’s time will under perform and therefore might have a slim chance to succeed.

 

Like every other skill that people develop, time management is not exception. Time management is actually life management. People or businesses that are succeeding and those that are not have the same amount of time in common; it is the most consistent commodity that God has given us all. Every year has 525,600 minutes and every day has 1,440minutes both for the rich and the poor, the difference is what we do with.

 

We are familiar with the popular saying that “time is money”, nothing can be truer than that statement. I have seen people foolishly pray to God to give them money, but God never gives anyone money but He gives time and what you now do with the time will determine whether you become poor or rich. The wise invest their time while the not-so-wise spend their time.

 

17 Irrefutable Laws of Time Management

 

In the course of my studying and teaching this topic, I have been able to come up with 17 laws of time management but, I will touch on just 7 of them for the purpose of this write up.

 

1. The Law of Affirmative Repetition

 

Every idea, innovation or creation first started in the mind. In the 80’s there was a television program on the NTA network then-called Basil and Company. The lead character was Mr. B and his popular cliché was “if want to be a millionaire, you think like a millionaire”. Successful people know that to be a success at any endeavour you must first see with the eyes of your mind and then and start saying to yourself and keep saying it over and over until it becomes part of you. Start seeing yourself as an excellent time manager and then begin to take conscious steps by acting being a good time manager before you know it your action will affect your behaviour until it becomes something you do like a reflex action.

 

  

2. The Law of Value Assessment

 

Time management actually starts with taking stock of what your life’s values are. The direction which you follow in terms of your usage of time is a strong indication of your life’s priorities. If your life ‘s priorities and your usage of time does not align you must begin to take conscious steps to bring harmony between your priorities and time before you can enjoy meaningful fulfillment in your life otherwise your life will always be at the mercy of people who know how to manage their time well

 

 

3. The Law of Purpose

 

The most important question in time management comes under this law. The ‘Why’ you are doing what you are doing. When you know what you want to achieve within a particular time frame and you know how badly you want it achieved you will give it all it requires. One of the major reason people squander time is because they do not know the purpose for it and goes to say in essence that do not know the purpose for life.

 

Where the purpose of a resource is not known or discovered, abnormal use of such resource is inevitable. When you see the end picture of your expectation, it gets you fired up to want to accomplish.

 

 

4. The Law of Focus

 

“A broken focus is an enemy of distinction” – Mine.  The inability of business leaders to classify their jobs into 4 different categories also steals their time because they cannot focus on something. Important, not important, urgent, not urgent. Focus brings about partial blindness, which allows you to concentrate on the issues that require only your attention.

 

Focus helps you to ask the most important questions at every point in time, which is of what value is this task taking my time. The value question is pertinent to proper time management. Answering the value question will help you say NO when you need or have to.

 

 

5. The Law of Effectiveness

 

Discipline as a life is very important towards being effective. Effectiveness can be learned. Learning to organize your life and work is a discipline that can be learned, keeping a data of events and a daily to-do-list is important. Effectiveness has to do with a measure of quality and just quantity, it is the ability to achieve  a stated goal or objective judged in terms of output and impact.

 

6. The Law of Procrastination

 

This is the number killer of good and worthy causes. It is pushing forward the task or jobs that be done now to another time. Pushing forward what can be done till the future is likened to someone who uses a credit card-you spend your future before you get there, so that when you get to the future there is nothing left for you to spend.

 

Start every task by breaking them down into small achievable bits. When a task is left in its lump state it looks overwhelming and the desire or motivation to carry out such tasks will wane and then you find you pushing down to another, which will never end. To encourage yourself, when you finish your small tasks, celebrate that milestone and you will be encouraged to do more.

 

 

7. The Law of Personal Development

 

Personal development is important to time management, because it affords you the opportunity of acquiring the requisite skill to advance your life, career and business forward. Get a mentor, someone who has succeeded in managing their own life whereby they now have control over their life and career.

 

Until your locus of control is internalized you have not started on the path to a world class career. It is better to ride on the shoulders of people who have succeeded and then accomplish more for yourself, through attending seminars, trainings, buying their products such as books, CD’s etc.

 

 

RELATING TIME MANAGEMENT TO YOUR BUSINESS

 

 

 

1. Packets of Time: Businesses lose time in the form of little packets here and there. 10minutes here and another 5minutes there for task that have little or nothing to do with the business. It is therefore important if your business is going to maximize its most precious asset to its advantage to have the company’s daily business broken down into bits so that time can be allotted to the things that must get done in packets.

 

It will be extremely difficult for people who cannot manage their lives profitably to be able to manage a business profitably. It is most unlikely for anyone who is consistently a poor manager of time to suddenly become a good manager of business. Allotting time in packets form is the most potent way to keep track of how time is used, if therefore time is being squandered it will be obvious and steps can be quickly taken to revert and outcomes can easily be measured.

 

2.     Discipline with Telephone: The use of telephone in the business place

is one area of time use that business owners must check for ineffective use of its time. It is important for ground rules to be in place in the office especially in the use of mobile phones during office hours. People generally run their own business or do any other thing that is not of value to the business with the time that the company is paying for, this also has to do with ethics but, it is a topic for another time.

 

Other people use such time to be on the internet doing businesses or just catching fun online at the expense of the company. We have said that there is a lot of difference between efficiency and effectiveness. As efficiency is getting the job done with any deadlines or limits to how and when it is being done effectiveness is getting it done the right way and at the right time and this give rise to precision as to what the outcome will be.

 

 

 

3.     Organizing Meetings:  In as much as having meetings in an organiza-

tion is an important tool in reviewing progress and other functions of keeping track with the performance in the company, it can be counter productive if not properly organized and it’s purpose understood. There are no hard and fast rule concerning what day of the week to have a meeting but, it is worthy of note that a lot of such meetings end as a waste of precious time which could have been converted to other value adding task.

 

Time must be properly allotted to such meetings and there must be an agenda which must be strictly followed in other not waste precious time. It must not be an open ended meeting if time will be preserved. People can talk issues to death without the commensurate action to back up agreements at such meetings.

 

 

 

4.     Delegating: Business owners and corporate executives can save a lot of 

Time to attend to other issues that can take their businesses to higher level if they will learn to delegate some of their duties to people working with them. This is a hard pill for business owners or executive to swallow but borrowing from the wisdom of Theodore Roosevelt – “The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it”

 

It is unfortunate that leaders that cannot give power to other are insecure and thereby wasting a great amount of time which would have been used to bring value to the company.

 

Time management is vital for the survival of any organization, important information you would not want to lose sight of as you aspire to take your business to the next level, time is truly of essence. Cheers.