Get free time here! (Time Management Tips)

Time is categorized in three dimensions: Past, present, future. There are two distinct philosophic viewpoints on time.

1. It is part of the fundamental structure of the universe in which events occur in sequence. This is the realist view, also called Newtonian time, as subscribed by Isaac Newton.
2. It is part of a fundamental intellectual structure, and not an event or a thing. It is like space and numbers, not measurable in a container and cannot be travelled. This is the views of Gottfried Leibniz and Immanuel Kant.

Nevertheless, whatever time is, people are time-bounded. Those who live, live according to time, those who merely exist, don’t care about time. Time is of significant social importance – Time is money. It also has personal value – it makes us aware of the limited time we have for living on this earth. Ray Cummings, C.J. Overbeck and John Archibald Wheeler described time as: “It is what keeps everything from happening at once."

I don’t want to go into the history of the calendar, time measurement devices and the difference between linear and cyclical time, or numeric (Chronos) and divine (Kairos) time, or into Einstein and his theory of relativity; this hub is about Time Management. Information regarding the former is inter alia available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time

So let’s get a simple definition for time - Time is a present given to us the day we were born. It is exactly twelve hours per day, seven days per week, twelve months per year, and -

1. Seventy to eighty years according to the Bible (if we respect and obey our parents - Exodus 20:12 & Psalm 90:10. Though according to Genesis 6:3, hundred and twenty years.)
2. Seventy to eighty years according to Western statistics. (70-75 yrs for men, 75-80 for women).

(Some people spend their time conversing and arguing about the rationale, truth and relevance of these facts, and they even try to prove it wrong, while some people have better things to do and others nothing.)

Time is precious!

• Time equals life; therefore, waste your time and waste your life, or master your time and master your life - Alan Lakein.
• Ordinary people think merely of spending time. Great people think of using it - Author Unknown
• Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend - Theophrastus

Time can be wasted, beguiled, served, employed, estimated, kept track with, filled, found, gained, looked at, spent and MANAGED. Time can not be borrowed, lent, sold or bought.

• The key is in not spending time, but in investing it - Stephen R. Covey
• Money, I can only gain or lose. But time I can only lose. So, I must spend it carefully - Author Unknown.
• William Penn: Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.

1. To do what we should do.
2. To do what we would like to do.

• William Shakespeare: Make use of time, let not advantage slip.
• H. Jackson Brown: Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.
• Maya Angelou: All great achievements require time.
  
  

Managing time means we know exactly what to do when. Having a time schedule and living according to it, means waking up in the mornings with a clear vision and a definitive mission. This alone provokes the feeling of contentment we will experience at the end of the day when we know we have done what we intended to do.

• Peter F. Drucker: Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else.
  
  

Definition according to wikipedia: Time management is the organization of tasks or events by first estimating how much time a task will take to be completed, when it must be completed, and then adjusting events that would interfere with its completion so that completion is reached in the appropriate amount of time. Calendars and day planners are common examples of time management tools.

This is one of the easiest things in life to do: Create a schedule. If it makes sense on paper, it will be feasible. It is important to plan our time on paper. A time-table, displaying the timeslots of activities and visible for all to see, encourage us to keep to our schedules. It is also a guide to our loved-ones who need our attention.

Planning is the easiest: Merely make a list of all activities and divide it in the 24 hours of a day. Working the plan is the most difficult. It requires self-motivation, discipline and determination.

The quantity of time we spend on activities is not the essence; it is the quality of our labour that determines our success.

• Anthony Robbins: Once you have mastered time, you will understand how true it is that most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a year – and underestimate what they can achieve in a decade!
• Charles Bruxton: You will never “find” time for anything. If you want time, you must make it.
• Michael Altshuler: The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.
  
  

• Plan your work then work your plan – (as far as I remember this was said by Napoleon Hill in his book 25 Laws of Success. I’ve lent this jewel of a book to somebody who never brought it back. May he/she suffers painful and involuntary muscular contractions until the book is back in my library!)
• Work your plan. Follow the schedule you have planned. Our desire and determination to complete a task before we do anything else only provokes frustration. If we have planned two hours for a specific activity, we’ve got to stick to the two hours in order to give all our attention to the next activity. This will, of course, not always be possible, for some of our tasks are urgent and important and have to be completed at a specific time. We must, however, be able to distinguish between urgent and important and master the art of switching off in the one timeslot and on again in the next one. Keep this African concept in mind: “Work never gets done, but the labourer does.”
• Don’t be rigid! Rigidness will lead to failure and severe unhappiness. One got to be flexible, willing to borrow time from another activity and - extremely important – give it back as soon as possible. Of course we will have to cope with interferences and crises. Many an hour we’ll find ourselves behind schedule. This should not discourage us. A schedule is merely the framework, the target, the goal. If a crisis forces us to skip an activity, we should not stress. Tomorrow is another day! Benjamin Franklin said: “Never leave ’till tomorrow which you can do today.” This advice should not influence our schedule; it should merely motivate us to complete a task required by an activity scheduled.
• Focus! Focus on NOW, this moment. Live in the present. Enjoy the current activity as if it is the only one on the agenda. Observe and appreciate, even while moving from one activity to another by car or merely walking from one location to another. To register what we see, hear, feel, smell and sense, to be grateful for the opportunity to live, work, act, do, or just be, is filling ourselves with the power of NOW. We are part of an enormous social structure. We are not only serving ourselves and our families, but our neighbours, our community, our country, the whole world. We are doing something that has an effect on the entire community. When I was a child, while doing my homework and even while I performed simple tasks such as washing dishes, I pretended I was already a skilled and qualified grown-up, doing the real thing. This idea made me feel worthwhile and important; it filled me with bubbling enthusiasm, passion and energy. As an adult I recall this specific feeling when I find myself in a negative mood. Some people pretend and dream forever like a child, they never experience the joy of living dreams in reality. They think “when I reach my goal… when I’m done with this or that… when this meeting is over… whenever that happens, I will be happy. By the time they reach that ‘moment’, they can’t enjoy it, because their thoughts are once again ahead of them, busy to focus on the next this and that to happen in their lives. Knowing all the feelings one experience while living in the future, as well as all the feelings one experience while living in the past, I can testify today that living in the present is the most awesome of them all.
• Don’t get distracted. Interferences should not distract our attention. While busy with one activity, we should not even think about another activity. If a thought pops up in our minds about ‘something else’, or we receive a call or visit in connection with an activity in another timeslot, we should merely make a note of it and forget about it until we can attend to in the specific timeslot planned. Jumping from one activity to another is tiresome and confusing, leaving us at the end of the day with the awful idea that we have accomplished ‘nothing’.
• Be productive means working as quickly, thoroughly and effectively as possible. But always keep in mind that ‘hasty climbers have sudden falls’, and Slow and Sure wins the race’. Of course the latter should not be our norm, but a motivator on those days we lack the needed energy to work at top speed. ‘Don’t rush’ does not mean ‘work at a snail's pace’. Speed up production without creating anxiety and unnecessary stress, should be the rule.
• Quality input is a prime requisite for all tasks. Compliance with responsibilities in a slip-slop manner will not be appreciated by anyone. It is better not doing it at all as doing it half-hearted and piteously.
• Be punctual. Punctuality is certainly one of the most important and appeasing habits to acquire. Running behind schedule, being late for appointments, waiting for others who are late, causes unbearable stress.
• Free time is not for doing ‘nothing’, but for doing pleasant things such as meditating, giving attention to personal matters such as visits to the gym, hairdresser, beauty salon, sport clubs, listening to music or playing music instruments, watching uplifting movies, reading soul-enriching books, shopping, or visiting friends (on earth or in cyberspace).

A diary or a notebook for reminders is a must in the life of an organised person. We should not use brain energy to remember nitty-gritty. However, we have to be careful not to make checking and updating of a diary or notebook a time-consuming task. It should be done as easy and quickly as possible. Eva Young: “To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing.”

Tasks could be prioritized in four categories -

1. Urgent and important
2. Urgent but not important
3. Not urgent but important
4. Not urgent and not important

• Lee Lacocca: If you want to make good use of your time, you’ve got to know what is most important and then give it all you’ve got.

• Baltasar Gracian: A wise person does at once what a fool does at last. Both do the same thing; only at different times.

The categorization of tasks has to be done at the beginning of a timeslot, or at the end to be ready for attention during the next timeslot. Tasks should be diarized. Evidently the ‘urgent and important’ tasks will be attended to first. Thereafter the ‘urgent but not important’, then the ‘not urgent but important’, and last the ‘not urgent and not important’. When time runs out, the tasks not attended to will be part of the ‘To-Do’ in the next timeslot of the specific activity. Sooner or later the ‘not urgent and not important’ will be ‘urgent and important’. To distinguish between urgent and important is absolutely essential. ‘Urgent’ will be the one that has to be supplied first to whoever demands it, and, of course, the most important ‘whoever’ will have to be pleased first. ‘Important’ may not have an immediate deadline.

• Carl Sandburg: The time for action is now. It’s never too late to do something.

Procrastinators will always find themselves in a ‘please and explain’ situation, always the source of severe frustration for all involved. There are two types of procrastinators: Those with too many irons in the fire, and those arch-scoundrels who pretend they can provide what they cannot provide. Nevertheless, both types drive other people nuts. Procrastinating is therefore a habit not to be acquired by anyone who wants to be proud of himself and his achievements.

Postponing important and even less important tasks turns us into procrastinators.

• Chinese Proverb: One cannot manage too many affairs: like pumpkins in the water, one pops up while you try to hold down the other.
• Publius Syrus: To do two things at once is to do neither.
  
  

• Richard H. Nelson: Never let yesterday use up today.
• W. Somerset Maugham: I don’t think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.
• Sara Paddison: Realize that now, in this moment of time, you are creating. You are creating your next moment. That is what’s real.
• Thomas Jefferson: Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much can be done if we are always doing.
• Henry David Thoreau: It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?
• Lord Chesterfield: Take care of the minutes and the hours will take care of themselves.
• Shoppenhauer: The common man is not concerned about the passage of time, the man of talent is driven by it.
• Charles Richards: Don’t be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of. One man gets only a week’s value out of a year while another man gets a full year’s.

http://www.lifeoptimizer.org/2007/03/08/66-best-quotes-on-time-management/#comment-3325#comment-3325

1 Cor 9:26-27: So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.

Col 4:5-6: Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

Luke 14:28: For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?

Ecc 3:1: For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.

When you get the time, please take the time to read the short-story I have orchestrated with the word 'time' -   

http://hubpages.com/hub/A-Time-To-Love