Time Management is easy!
Today's big challenge - people find it difficult to manage time . In my opinion, it's very easy. Question may arise in your mind? If it's that easy, why am I unable to do so? Reason is very simple; you don't know how to manage yourself. So, it's obvious and difficult for you to manage time and many other things.
Please pay attention to the small things which are discussed in this article; You will become “master in time management”.
Check your history?
If you look back 5 to 10 years, you are doing and experiencing more or less similar situations or problems, which you experienced earlier. Now maybe people and places are different, problems remain the same.
Impacts of miss management:
- Running late.
- Missing cab or
bus.
- Forgetting meetings
or events. Paying fee or tax on the last day in a rush.
- Shouting at your
superior (many superiors changed but your shouting continued)
- Yelling about
your office. (you changed many offices, but you are experiencing similar
things, even in the world’s best offices).
- Fighting with neighbors. (You change many houses or places, but problem remains)
- Gossiping and
many more.
Remember: What you are today is consistent, continued, patterns of repetitive behaviors and actions of earlier days. If you want to see change in your future, break today's pattern and replace it with good things. How? Please focus on the next section...
Turning idle time into productive time:
Assume, you are running late. From today take a resolution. I will go 10 or 20 minutes early. You see the victory over one negative habit. Which you have developed from years.
When I was working in my previous office EMC2, I was using an office cab. In 4+ years of travel, I never asked the cab driver to wait for a minute or never missed the cab at all. In fact, I motivated and made few of my cabmates come on-time. I used to go 20 to 30 minutes before the cab time. You may get a question, what do you do, by going that early? What great are you doing by running late? I was getting time to study people, watching what happening in the society. Many great life lessons I learnt by going early and observing things.
One more benefit is, if you experience running late and distractions in the early morning, you have possibility to experience chain of distractions the entire day. Always start your day with a lot of happiness and peace.
Similarly, instead of complaining and shouting or yelling people or company, try looking on the brighter side in every negative situation, after some days you become a more stress-free person. You can ask: There are few idiots, what to do? Don't worry, they are idiots because they didn't get the opportunities that you got. Instead of screaming at them, understand and show sympathy towards them. Learn skills to handle them, shouting is not a solution, it creates more problems.
Observe every “need improvement” area in yourself. Go step by step implementation. But you may say, I don't have that much time? Cool, please pay attention to the section below...
Split your time and check:
Everyone has 24 hours’ time. It's the same time from CEO to Security Guard. How do CEO and leaders get enough free time? And you don't? Let's split the time and understand.
- 8 hours of
healthy sleep.
- 8 hours work. (If
really productive)
- 1 hour morning
preparation and bath.
- 2 hours
breakfast, meals and snacks.
- 1 hour for
exercise, yoga and meditation.
- 2 hours traveling
to the office.
- 2 hours you get
free time. (Family and other activities)
Presently due to Covid-19 situation, 2 hours traveling time is also added to your free time. Total 4 hours! Check where are you spending this...are you really spending 1 hour for exercise and Yoga?
When I was in EMC2, people were asking me, how are you getting all this time, you are receiving so many awards at work and in parallel you are doing other things. Other things mean...
I was spending time on manufacturing transformers and inductors; my wife was the Proprietrix of electronics inhouse manufacturing unit. I was a part time contributor, getting raw materials, winding and creating devices, and delivering to the client. (Around 3 hours daily I was spending on my second venture, which failed and I succeeded in life with great lessons) and 2 hour I was spending on writing blogs, book content and so on. My travelling time was 3.5 hours daily due to traffic and distance. How did I manage? Just reduced my sleeping time to 3 to 4 hours.
I never ever gave injustice to my office work, never skipped any meeting, never missed any deliverables. We must be very sincere to our office, because they are paying for us.
In fact, I used my travel time to make a note of my thoughts for blogs, writing Quora answers, noting ideas for office work and so on.
As I mentioned in the above point, you just replace your idle time as productive.
Example: When Sachin Tendulkar just touches the ball, it goes to the boundary. He scores either 4 or 6 runs. Actually, he is not really putting any great effort or force, it happens like a miracle. That is nothing but decades of hard work, dedication and mastering experience.
Similarly, for me giving motivational sessions or writing content, getting ideas is really the easiest job, I don't put much time or effort into it, it just happens.
How to be cool and relaxed by managing these many things?
You can be active and energetic as well. Just delete that evening feelings or opinions, just assume evening is another fresh beginning for you. If you are unable to get that energy, just listen to some powerful songs in the evening that will trigger you from down to high, dullness to powerlessness.
My office cabmates and many of my colleagues and subordinates asked me, how come you are this energetic after the work hours. As I said it's purely mind set, delete your old pattern and begin with new. Just change your thoughts to change your life.
I'm very sure, all our great leaders and CEOs are good at managing themselves, that is the reason they get that much free time to manage other things.
If you don't have free time, means you are poor in planning or estimation which is yielding all negative results.
To one of my previous manager Tamil Selvi, once I told her that the other team is working on weekend and daily, they are stretching. She just said, it's a result of very poor planning or estimations and management. She is true, we should stretch and work on weekends, only when it's really needed. Not regularly, it makes no sense to the client or yourself. If you are stretching any day or working on weekends once in a quarter or 6 months, client will recognise that as a great job. If you are doing daily or weekly, they assume you are an under-performer or unqualified to do the given job.
If one knows how to manage himself or herself, he/she can easily manage people, work and time. Remember, once you step out of the office, just forget everything about work. Some of you are feeling stressed because you think about work after office hours (when eating, taking bath, traveling, walking, even in dreams also). That is equivalent to working more than 18 hours in a day, obviously you get stressed and tired. Forget office once you step out! Also Love your work that gives you a great energy.
By dealing with one project you are getting tired means, what about the situation of Richard Branson he is heading 400 different business units. Still he is having enough free time and doing many adventures!
You believe it or not under my earlier
manager Tamil Selvi. I was handling 3 to 6 implementation projects in parallel
with 5 different roles, Development-20%, Automation Testing-40%, Support with
SLA’s-10%, PTR/IR Fixing-10%, and Project Management-20% with multiple country
clients and stakeholders, marketing team, 3rd party hosts. Challenge was
adjusting time zones and scheduling meetings with corners of the world along
with deliverables in focus. All this was my solo performance and fully
independent role. Even by having personal goat farm construction work in
parallel during those days (First venture got failed and I succeeded in life
with great lessons). I was successfully handling all those things.
Don't say, I have too many things. Just learn prioritization & time-management, it's easy! Win yourself to win the world.
Story of My Director (in EMC2)
I got an opportunity to meet him in EMC2. Here are the few things about my Director- An American, father of 4 children, has 2 businesses in Ireland, doing coding and building applications as a part time job. He is a DJ, he gives one DJ show every month, he is lyric writer, music composer and singer. In his free time, he attends courses like marketing, sales and so on.
During our office potluck day, I just asked about his camera. He said, it was purchased recently and he explained many features of that camera. He opened his tab and showed me the 10 books he studied, to learn about photography. He is expert in technical qualities, great in programming and awesome in extracurricular activities. During his stay in India, I always observed a great level of energy, happiness and joy in his face. He answered all our technical and non-technical questions.
After a few months he returned back to America, I once shared Kannada movie song links to him (Yash movie - Masterpiece songs), he watched all the songs and shared his views about production and music tracks. Don't assume he is not working for office; he was one of the fastest growing leader in his career from his deliverables and achievements under our division.
He spends great time with family and children, he shared many of his family outing photo albums with us.
Now just, tell me how occupied you are? If you learn to manage yourself, you will easily learn time management!
