February 7, 2008
Today's Most Valuable Commodity: Time
"Do you love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff that life is made of." Benjamin Franklin, one of the most prolific and accomplished men of his era, wrote that in 1746. He was a man who practiced what he preached and understood that time is, indeed, the most precious of all commodities.
Life may be more complicated today then it was in the 1700s, but one thing that hasn’t changed over the centuries is that time is a gift given to all of us in equal measure. We all get the same 60 minutes in an hour and the same 24 hours in a day. Learning to spend time wisely is an important life skill to master for once the minutes and hours of a day are gone, they’re gone forever and you can never get them back.
As an adult, you have the power to choose how you spend your time at any given moment. Since attitude determines behavior and behavior determines results, you need to develop a time conscious attitude. Think of time as CURRENCY that you choose to spend rather than an elusive substance that slips away. You would never throw money into the trash bin, but that is exactly what you’re doing when you waste time.
The first step to good time management is to figure out where your daily allotment of 24 hours actually goes. The way to do this is by faithfully keeping a time log tracking what you do each hour of the day for a week or two. If you’re like most people, you may be shocked to see how much time you spend doing things that are unproductive. While many time wasters are unforeseeable and unavoidable, planning and organizing those aspects of your life that can be controlled make you a more productive person and help you to be better prepared to handle those unexpected occurrences.
If you’re not happy with how you’re spending your time, decide what’s important for you to spend it on. Remember, every time you say “Yes” to something that is unimportant, you are saying “No” to something that is important. Be intentional and thoughtful about what tasks you put on your schedule each day. Focus on your goals and eliminate any time thieves that don’t serve to further those goals. If you spend your time doing errands and small tasks that aren’t essential for you to complete now, drop, diminish, defer or delegate them. If you’re using them as an excuse not to move forward, you need to figure out why. Otherwise, you will continue to sabotage your ability to stay focused and accomplish your goals.
Using time effectively is about creating balance and working smarter and more productively. It is NOT about just being busy. Once you start to use your time more productively, you find it takes much less of it to get things done; you don’t get overwhelmed; you stay more focused; you feel more empowered, you have greater feelings of accomplishment and you really enjoy the time you have.
It’s never too late to break old, poor time management habits and adopt new, more productive ones, but it's not easy and it won't happen in one day. As Mark Twain once said, "A habit cannot be tossed out the window; it must be coaxed down the stairs a step at a time." Start now. Time’s a wasting.
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