IN THESE days of mobile phone galore, many people do not wear a watch around their wrists. But whether you have a wrist watch or a wall clock, you need to keep the clock – you need to manage time. Time management is extremely crucial to success and significance in our personal and professional lives. Time is an important resource that is available to all human beings. It affords us space within which we can fulfil our aspirations. If you manage your time wisely, it is most likely that your life will turn out pretty well.
Success in any enterprise in life does not merely depend on how swift, strong, smart, scholarly and skilful people are. More importantly, it is the way we harness opportunities within the time of our lives.
The fastest runner does not always win the race, and the strongest warrior doesn’t always win the battle. Wise people sometimes go hungry, and the skilful are not necessarily wealthy. We also know that those who are educated don’t always lead successful lives. It is all determined by how they all use time before, during and after the moment of opportunity. If you have written an examination before, you would know that it is not the brightest who always make the best marks. A very pitiful feverish situation in the examination room is when you have studied but because you did not manage your time well in the examination room, you could not finish. How sad!
Likewise, in the exam of life, time is the difference between the rich and the poor. It is the difference between the leader and the follower. The way we position ourselves within the time of our lives produce the quality of life we experience.
Watch out! When I talk about time management, I am not talking about the manipulation of time. As you all know, we have twenty-four hours each day and there is nothing we can do about that. You cannot adjust the amount of time available to you. Rather, you can alter your activities within the amount of time you have. Time management thus is about exercising control over the amount of time you spend on specific activities with an intense focus on productivity.
The big question: How do you manage yourself in such a way that you can optimise your time? I offer three suggestions:
1. Establish your priorities
ESTABLISHING your priorities is about assigning a level of importance to the different things in life which compete for your time, attention and resources. Everyday when you wake up, there will be many things and people that will compete for space on your agenda. The onus is on you to determine what is important in your life. Then, of the things which are important, you have to categorize them according to their weight of importance.
2. Examine your practices
THIS simply means take a second look at your lifestyle. Lifestyle simply means the way you live. Many people know what is important in their lives but the way they conduct their lives is contradictory to their priorities. Every student knows that their books are important but it is not all of them who study. You want to be among the wealthiest people in the world, yet you have never read any book on investment, wealth creation and entrepreneurship. You need to have a serious life. You must couch a result-oriented action plan for your life and religiously stick to it. Never wake up I the day without knowing what to do. By all means, protect yourself from time eaters – your mobile phone, television, social media are very common time eaters.
3. Employ your present
TIME cannot be packaged, stored and retrieved. It comes and passes and never comes back. The only time you have is today – now. Make no room for procrastination. If you miss today, it’s gone forever. So decide to make every moment of your life count. When you are asked, “What are you doing?” never ever answer by saying, “nothing.” There should never be a moment of “nothing” in your life. You should always have an agenda you are pursuing.
MANAGING your time is not a mystery. It arises out of a disciplined effort to manage your life in a strategic way. God gives us time and it is our responsibility to make the time count. Be blessed!
© 2011 Terry Mante
PEDNET
Accra, Ghana
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