Time Management- Be the pilot and fly the time!

Time Management is one of the biggest challenge that we professionals are facing in our daily life. It has become such an important entity that maximizing personal efficiency has become impossible without it. Time management is extremely important to meet the goals we set in our daily lives. But it is only WE who can make this happen. WE are the pilots on the aircraft called TIME. We many a times wish that a day comprised of more than 24 hours. And we follow our mind that tells us "Oh boy, it was a hectic day today.. I had no time for anything else". Well wait a minute, did the interaction with your mind end in this manner? The answer was YES. Now let's take a step backward and list all the activities we were involved with throughout the day. Surprised to see a lot of time was wasted? Now do you feel your day was very hectic? How about minimizing the time spent on unproductive activities? In my opinion, there are six important factors responsible for effective time management.

• Being present or aware of the "tasks for the day"
• Setting priorities
• Motivation
• Maintaining integrity
• Planning
• Be thankful

By being present to a situation and aware of the tasks for the day, one would be conscious that there are lot of tasks to be completed. Writing down a TASK LIST would be the best way to be conscious of the pending work. Imagine the joy of tearing the list sheet after striking out all the tasks at the end of the day!! And imagine doing this EVERYDAY!! I am sure you would feel you are The EMPEROR of this entire UNIVERSE..

Setting priorities is another important aspect to complete the most important tasks on time. When we are flooded with information, requests and committments, it is nice to peel away all of the excess and just focus on the priority tasks. It is easy to turn into a ball and start bouncing from one thought to another. A good reason for failure in life. It is important to concentrate the most on priority tasks and concentrate until these tasks are completed at the earliest. I was once startled after reading an article about Sarah Palin, the former Vice Presidential candidate of United States who wrote the most important tasks for the day on her palm!! I am sure that she would have concentrated real hard on fulfilling the tasks written on her palm. I felt this habit was truly inspiring. I wonder whether getting a tattoo done on your body stating the two most important goals of your life would keep you inspired until you achieve them one day!

Motivating yourself until completion of a task is important so that you have ample time for other tasks. Understanding how important each task is for you is a critical factor to keep the motivation high. Do not let the motivation go down by bouncing on other activities when a task is on hand. I strongly feel that you tend to get highly motivated when you complete the most important tasks on time thus helping you complete the other simpler tasks much sooner. Always visualize and imagine yourself screaming with joy and feeling ontop of the world when the task is complete. Expecting to experience this moment would keep you going and would in turn avoid procrastinating your work.

Maintain integrity and honor your deadline after you decide the deadline for each task. Affirm to yourself that if you don't keep up the committment to meet your deadline, then you will never be committed to complete any other deadline and that you are unreliable! Declaring a deadline and announcing it aloud to others is in a way very helpful to complete the task on time. It helps in pricking your mind often that there are others observing you working on it and thus helps you in working effectively on it in order to "LOOK GOOD" infront of them. As told by Paulo Coelho "When you really want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it" in The Alchemist, if you really want the task to be complete, integrity will follow you and you will fulfill your goal. Once you are passionate and focused on the task, integrity is taken care of.

Planning your work on a task from the beginning is the backbone for its successful completion. When you have a task in hand, be realistic in setting a deadline. Spend good time when writing the list and planning a deadline. Setting unrealistic goals and not meeting them can really hamper your self confidence. I once heard about Merlin's principle at a personality development seminar that I attended. According to this principle, a goal is better achieved when you plan the tasks backward and ahead of time. For example, if you plan to deliver a project by the end of next month, start planning from the moment you have delievered the product to the client. Starting from this order- date to deliver the product, date of final presentation, date to test the project case and so on until you choose a date to kick start the project. I personally tried this during my GMAT preparation and found it to be extremely effective.

Be thankful to yourself and to others after every accomplishment. Ensure that you feel that you are a very important person and without you the task couldn't have been completed. We humans are always hungry to receive praise for whatever we do. Hence it is important that we honestly acknowledge the people around who helped you in successfully completing the task. Make sure you sincerely appreciate them and make them feel very important.

I believe these factors can be applied to reach any personal or professional goals. Be motivated and be inspired. Use your time effectively with a plan and a purpose.


For reference, I am sharing a tool (Time Management Grid) that was shared by one of my good friend. We may want to use to this tool effectively here on. Below is the link to access this tool.


http://www.teal.org.uk/sv/timemgnt.htm