Time!

Time:

Time is the one which is the most important entity for those who want to improve themselves. Without managing time effectively no one ever had achieved bigger goals in life. Time is the one which can lead to infinite possibilities. There is a saying that time can heal anything!

Are we using our time effectively? Are we using the resource which is equally distributed unlike money among each and every human being? Equal distribution in the sense – it is not that the greatest scientist Abdul Kalam got some extra time per day rather than getting 24 hours, IPhone founder Steve Jobs got little extra time more than others! Everyone ever gets the same 24 hours per day only. Whether we are going to waste the time or taste the fruits, the goals reaped by investing time is totally dependent on how we use the time available.

Human beings always have the tendency to be little more time conscious since long back even before watch, clocks were invented. We used some signs of nature like direction of sun, moon, and weather variations and estimated the time. It is pathetic that nowadays some of us, I can even say most of us are just wasting time without even conscious of how much time being wasted even after having sophisticated techniques to track time up to milli/micro seconds accurately. Once time is wasted it never comes back. Consider time as money if you are that kind of person giving importance to each and every Rupee.

Let’s say you are given 86,400 INR every day and you are ditching that amount into the dustbin every day. Will anyone do this? But we do not care to waste 86400 seconds given to us daily. Even money wasted can be earned back but no one can buy some extra time. For example, even the richest people of the earth could not buy some extra time when they were diagnosed with terminal cancer, when they were affected by war or natural disasters, when they got silent heart attacks in the middle of the nights. But when someone uses time effectively he would be able to earn back the money lost without affected by the factor of how much was lost. So comparing time with money would be not a better idea but it is a good one to start with.

When you are given 86,400 INR and if you know it will be taken back from you at the end of the day, you will plan accordingly so that you spend each and every paisa to the fullest, right? The same principle is to be applied here. We have to create a plan how we are going to spend these 86400 seconds given to us.

Everyday once you wake up, just spend few minutes writing down your goals. Write down your ‘Tasks List’ – that contains the “to do’s” for the day. Arrange them in the order of priority so that you do the highest priority task first. In the book “Eat that frog” Brian Tracy asks to do the highest priority task first when you start the day even if it is not the task which you would like to do because of various factors like due to the complexity or the task is not rewarding instantly and so on followed by medium priority and low priority tasks. If you are not able to follow strictly, no worries but have a plan! There is a famous saying in Tamil “Plan pannaama edhaiyum panna kudaadhu” (without planning never do anything) and that applies to managing time as well.

You can use various techniques to manage your time more effectively like Pomodoro technique in which you have to allot a time for a task say 25 minutes and not to involve in any other tasks including seeing personal mobile notifications, answering mails, chit-chatting with colleagues/friends and so on but after 25 minutes take a 5 minute break so that you can do all the stuffs like taking a sip of water, moving around, checking notifications and so on and you can repeat the cycle. This time that is 30 minutes in this example is called one Pomodoro. After 4 Pomodoro’s you can take a little longer break say 30 minutes. You can decide the duration of each Pomodoro and break duration and the number of Pomodoro’s needed for completing a task and so on as per your convenience but ensure that it is a workable model. In this way, we can avoid distractions and use our precious time more effectively. There are many apps available based on this technique.

Use this or any other technique whichever works for you and manage your time which is the most precious resource in the world more consciously and little more effectively from today!