Time Management

As I was thinking what to share with you, I came back to the whole concept of time. And as I thought about that, I remembered the words of a well-loved song from ‘The Sound of Music’. A classic movie which revolves around Maria who starts out as a nun and then has to deal with whether it is her calling or not. In the monastery, the nuns have a tough time with her and sing a song about her, the words of which made me think. “How do you catch a cloud and pin it down? How do you keep a wave upon the sand? How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?” All impossible things – try holding a moonbeam or try keeping a wave back.

Time is so much like that. It’s upon us and before we know what has happened, it’s gone. There’s precious little we can do to hold it back. We have it, use it the best we can and then it’s over.

There’s a study that was done many years ago that calculated that during a 70 year lifespan, a typical person sleeps for 23 years, works for 16 years, watches 8 years of television, eats and travels 6 years each, devotes 4½ years to leisure and 2 years to dressing. Spiritual pursuits are 6 months. Maybe we don’t fall into what’s typical today and yet it gives one an idea of how time gets spent. This brought home to me the question – ‘How are we spending our time?” If time is so fleeting and all we have is a 24 hour period that God has given to us to spend and to spend wisely, then how are we dealing with that?

Bob Shank writes in an article ‘Digging out from Overloaded Days: Making the most of your Time’. He says, “More than ineffective time management, our problem may be in the area of life management. If you aren’t sure you’re doing the right things, doing more of the wrong things won’t help. Well-managed days do not result in a well-managed life. Well-managed days are the result of a well-managed life.”

Steven Covey, the management guru, says, “the key is not in spending time but in investing it.” Shank goes on to ask the question, “How are we going about our time? How are we spending it? The key or the first step in honing your life management is a reconfirmation of your primary life mission. What is it that you believe you are here to do? You have a life goal, you have an agenda. Unless you are clear about what you are trying to achieve in a lifetime, how can you know what you should accomplish in the course of a day.” Makes sense, doesn’t it?

He then goes on to offer 4 tips in terms of time management.

1. Understand the difference between an agenda and a schedule. It’s possible to fall into the trap of becoming a servant to your schedule and wind up packing it all in but missing the mark about whether that is pursuing the agenda that you have been called or given in life. You may be by-passing the most significant openings because of your allegiance to your day planner or whatever it is that keeps your daily schedule. Lee Iacocca who was instrumental in turning around Chrysler Corporation in the 70s says, “If you want to make good use of your time, you’ve got to know what’s most important and then give it all you’ve got.” I wonder whether you have an agenda, whether you have a purpose in life. Remember your agenda may not really be to make the most money because we know that making the most money doesn’t result automatically in a good contented life. Nor is it reaching the top of the corporate ladder to the exclusion of everything else. People who have a good life are people who have life in balance, are able to see all aspects of their life, their family, their work, the environment, the community in balance. The agenda is a clear statement of what you’re trying to accomplish whether in a single day or in a lifetime. But your schedule is an order of events as they are expected to occur. When your schedule reflects your agenda, you’re in good shape. When an unplanned chance to advance your agenda conflicts with your schedule, the advice is ‘let it supersede’. Make sure that everything is subservient to your agenda.
2. Invest your time as seriously as you do your money. Most people would never be loose with their money but they are loose with their time. Be frugal with your time as you are with your money. Henry David Thoreau says, “It’s not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is what are we busy about? Just because somebody has your phone number and has a phone handy, doesn’t mean that they have the right to 15 minutes of your life. Examine who calls the shots in your life. Examine the people that you are spending time with, what are you spending time with? And then take a call on seriously spending your time well.
3. Evaluate your portfolio of relationships and focus on the performers. Find out who you’re spending the most time with. Is it people that you really want to be investing in? I go back to the Bible very often because that is the foundation for my belief system and world view. Jesus could have spent time with thousands of people because they came to listen to him and to follow Him. But he chose to move away with 12 people or with smaller groups because he wanted to invest in them. Similarly, don’t spend large amounts of time with people on whom you will not leave an imprint.
4. Pursue freedom, if necessary at the expense of success. He says “one of the greatest delusions of modern society is that freedom is a by-product of success.” Ask anybody who is extremely popular, talk to Sachin Tendulkar, and ask him if he has freedom to do what he wants to do, and he will say no. he can’t walk into a coffee shop, he can’t go for a movie without being mobbed by people. And sometimes success and freedom can be mutually exclusive. If you could have one, what would it be?

If you look at some of these things that I have been telling you, I wonder whether you are thinking about your own time. How does your time pan out? Are you making good use of your time? Maybe you are wondering how to do it, what are good tips? I am going to give you a few thoughts that I have gleaned from an article by Vic Coppolo. He likes to look at his day in a linear sense, looking at things one bit at a time. He says, “The key is to deal with every paper as it comes. There are 4 ways that you can handle a piece of paper as it comes to your desk.

• Handle it
• File it
• Delegate it to someone else
• Discard it

He says, “Work on that piece of paper and then go to something else.”

I want to leave you with a second thought that comes from Ken Blanchette who is the writer of ‘One Minute Manager’. He talks about the monkey which is the problems that come your way. It was developed by Bill Onkin almost 30 years ago, but the monkey stands for the next move that is required to continue a project. What Bill was saying was that problems or our monkeys you deal with as a manager, they come from 3 sources: your boss, your peers and your people. If somebody comes to you and says “we have a problem”, you need to be careful because the monkey is about to leap from the other person’s shoulder onto yours. If it’s your boss who comes to you, then there’s very little you can do. It’s more difficult to hit back the monkey to him. If a customer calls and says he’s not being treated well, you can’t tell him to care for and feed his own monkey. Again you’re stuck with it. That leaves the people around you, who work with you. Ken Blanchette says, “Managers with their egos in the wrong place think that whenever a subordinate brings them a problem, it’s because they want to watch expertise in action. But what they’re doing is building dependence rather than independence, and taking away people’s opportunities to build their self-esteem.

How do you handle the monkeys that come your way? How do you handle the pieces of paper that come your way? 2 small things that will allow you to look at the time that you have and ask the question: Am I handling time wisely? Is it moving in the direction of my agenda or am I being caught up in different schedules? I believe that when Jesus came on this earth, he had a clear agenda. Many times he could have been the most popular person, but he chose to leave the crowds because that wasn’t his agenda. His agenda was investing in people who would take it way past his lifetime.

How about you, my friends? Are you investing time properly? Are you managing your life properly? I came across this unknown poet who says this:

This is the beginning of a new day
God has given me this day to use as I will
I can waste it or use it for good
What I do today is important because I am exchanging a day of my life for it
When tomorrow comes this day will be lost forever leaving in its place something that I have traded for it
I want it to be gain not loss, good not evil, success not failure
In order that I should not regret the price that I paid for it.

I leave you with those thoughts. How are you managing your day and your time? I pray that you will do it wisely.

God Bless You All.