Plan Your Time - Manage Your Time, Invest Your Time

Introduction

At one stage or another we all have heard or read all or any of the below mentioned, Time Related Phrases:

1) Time is money. Time is wealth.

2) Time is a river. Time is wind.

3) Respect your time.

4) Doesn't matter what you do...time will just pass away.

5) You never know, when your time will change. (Samey bada balvaan hota hai)

6) Each year, each day, each moment is unique in its own way. Once it passes, it will never come again.

7) Respect my time and I will respect yours.

8) With time, all wounds will heal.

9) If I had more hours

10) I don't have time

There are many more.

But, like money or wealth or your assets can you save your time for difficult days? No, you cannot. Your time is now, invest it or waste it.

We are living in an era where researchers, philosophers and historians are talking, discussing and debating about "Life Management"..."Plan your life". Every individual should know what he want in his life? Where he see himself after 5 or 10 years? One should know what he or she is expecting in his or her life. Hence, Time Management is an important aspect of our life.

How busy are you? - Your daily Routine

Let's see, what we (Most of us) do in our daily life. How we are managing our day? As an example, I will take my daily schedule and I am sure that yours too will be closer to that. We spend time in following activities:

1) Rest / Sleep - 8 hours

2) Health: Yoga, Exercise - 1 hour

3) Prayers - 1 Hour

4) Food (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner & Snacks) - 2 hours

5) Entertainment - 2 hours

6) Knowledge / Learning / News - 1 hour

7) Socializing - 1 Hour

8) Work/Profession/Career - 10 hours

9) Traveling - 3hours

10) Time for Family - 3 hours

One should do all these activities to have a successful, purposeful, stress free and happy life. If I calculate above mentioned time, it comes out to be 32 hours, whereas there are only 24 hours in a day. So, how to manage? I don't want to cut any of the activity.

Manage your Time

One can manage his time by using following skills and tools

1) Planning

2) Multi-tasking

3) Optimum use of Technology

4) Delegation

5) Self Discipline

Plan your day. Be disciplined. Respect your time and that of others too. Have proper schedule. Do multitasking. Use technology in a best possible manner.

Let's plan your day

1) You wake-up in the morning and then go for walk or jogging. At the same time on your walk-man you can also listen to prayers, religious songs etc. Right or Wrong?

2) Once you come back from your walk, at the time of your morning tea or milk, you can scan through Newspaper or News Channels to keep you updated with the latest events and news. Can you?

3) While having your breakfast, you can also spend that time with your kids and family or listen to songs of your choice.

4) While driving or traveling to your office you can either listen to songs or use your mobile - phone to stay in touch with your friends and relatives through messages and calls. If you are at a senior level and really busy and your office is quite far away...you can also have one meeting in your car. You can also go through few reports, analysis; check those reports and also sign those documents that need your signatures and approvals. Can you do this?

5) In office, you do all of the following things:

A) Internal Meetings (There are three types of meetings - Briefing, Discussion / Debate, Review)

B) Routine work (It will be very useful for you to have well defined processes to take care of routine works)

C) Value Addition to your Function and Department

D) Client Meetings (Purpose can be any of the following: update them; get more business; grievance / query handling)

E) Interviews (To add a new person to your team; Employee Retention; Employee Grievance Handling)

Do you think that there is anything more that you do at your workplace; over and above the activities that I have listed???

6) During your first tea-break in office, have a brief meeting with your team-members and delegate your routine work.

7) You can have an important client or business meeting during your lunch.

8) For discussion / debates with seniors or your peers located at different areas, you can either use the technology of Conference Call or Video Conferencing. It will help you in managing your time and save your money. Same technology can be used for interviewing candidates from different locations. You can also use this technology for Induction, Training and Development and also for Media briefing. If you can solve a problem through a simple message on mobile phone or a simple e-mail; you don' have to call for a meeting. So, use your mobile phone and internet to help you in managing your time.

9) Along with your second tea-break, you can also have another meeting (Review Meeting) with your team.

10) While moving from one office to another or one department to another, you can also send messages to your family members, relatives and friends and stay in touch with them.

11) When you are in a meeting, it is important that you prepare yourself for the meeting and keep it within the limits of discussion. Be there for the meeting, on time and you should also know when to end the meeting. It is a matter of discipline.

12) In the evening, while going home you can do any of the following: Listen to your favorite songs; go through the reports and papers or have meeting with client or customer.

13) Once you are at home, give your time to family. Listen to them. Solve their Concerns. Enjoy with them. Do not bore them by discussing about your day in the office.

14) At the time of Dinner, you can again update yourself with news and current updates.

15) Before, you retire for the day, read something.

Do you think, that you have things to do or to take care that I have not mentioned in the list?

What Busy People do?

1) They respect their time as well as that of the other person.

2) They manage their time in such a manner that they get time to do everything in their life.

3) They use technology in a best possible manner.

4) They are self-disciplined.

5) They plan their day and their time.

6) They know their limitations. They trust people, efficiencies & talent of people around them and delegate their work.

7) They take responsibility and accountability.

What Busy People don't do?

1) They don't scream or complain for lack of time.

2) They do not procrastinate or postpone their work.

3) They don't gossip.

4) They don't blame TIME for their failures and frustrations.

5) They don't mix their work with family. They don't carry their work to home and don't bring their family emotions and fights to workplace.

6) They don't blame others.

Conclusion

Number of hours in a day will not change. There will only be 86,400 seconds in a day. It is up to you, how you manage and use each of those seconds. One needs to invest each second. As, it has been rightly said, time once passed will never come again. Busy people are very satisfied, happy and do everything that they want to do in their life. Those, who show that they are busy, end up with frustration, burn-outs, stress and most of the time failure in life and profession.

Before I sign-out, I like to share few examples to let you know the value of Time, I studied these examples when I was in school,

To realize the value of one year; ask a student who has failed a final exam.

To realize the value of one month; ask a mother who has given birth to a premature baby.

To realize the value of one week; ask an editor of a weekly newspaper or magazine

To realize the value of one hour; ask the lovers who are waiting to meet.

To realize the value of one minute; ask the person who has missed the train, bus or plane.

To realize the value of one second; ask a person who has survived an accident.

To realize the value of one millisecond; ask the person who has won a silver medal in the Olympics.

Time waits for no one. Treasure every moment you have. You will treasure it even more when you share it with someone special.

Looking forward to your Comments and Feedback

With lots of love, care and affection,

Sanjeev Himachali
Blog: http://sanjeevhimachali.blogspot.com
E-mail: ss_himachali@yahoo.com; sanjeev.himachali@gmail.com

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