RIGHT TURN
Mastering time management
Planning holds key: For every single minute spent in organising, one hour is earned while performing. Therefore organising oneself is very important to achieve goals.
We are discussing in this column five steps advocated by D. Scot in her book, ‘How to put more time in your life’.
First step is culminating the unfruitful desires involving much of our time by listening to our ‘mind’ rather than ‘heart’. We also discussed last week about the purists, over-committers, egoists and perfectionists who waste time unnecessarily to satisfy their/other’s ego. The second step deals with setting priorities. An irritant parent shouted at the school correspondent for his son not being taught good habits. “I have put my entire faith in you, paying heavy fee for my son. In return you don’t teach him manners and obedience. He is of late overindulging in TV and phone gossip. Has no time management, no control over eating and sleeping habits.”
The correspondent enquired how many children the parent had, and on learning that he had a single child, explained in a polite voice: “We certainly teach them discipline and good behaviour. But our main responsibility is to teach the subjects, complete the syllabusand see that they come out in flying colours in their exams.
What is your priority? As you are talking about time-management of your child, please introspect about yours. We have 40 children in each class to take care. How much time you are spending on your ‘only’ child teaching him discipline, good habits etc?” The sensible parent realised the rationale in the advice, apologised and left. Priorities are of three types: 1) Marginal -- that are not important to worry about. 2) Secondary -- which are worthy but do not require great time investment. 3) Central -- which are core priorities that involve deepest values. Get yourself organised. Short term objectives should serve as daily nudges towards achieving lifetime desires. One should be firm about the goals but can be flexible about the path.
For every single minute spent in organising, one hour is earned while performing. Determine your objectives, Evaluate alternatives, Choose the shortest route, Initiate new techniques, Develop precise schedules and Eliminate time-consuming non-priorities.
The best way to master your time management is to cultivate the habit of introspecting every night before going to sleep, what are the hidden drains of your time during the past 24 hours.
(To be continued)
Yandamoori@hotmail.com
YANDAMOORI VEERENDRANATH
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