Proper Time Management- The Base

I use different words, the base, the foundation, the building blocks, what ever names we use, they mean the same thing, if you really want to make an impact; you have to start with how you treat your time.

I did not choose Time Management, Time Management choose me. I started my career as a Business Consultant and ended up dealing with time tools, issues and systems for the last 35 years. I did not start out saying to myself, this seems like an interesting carrier choice, I think I will go down this path; my choice was made for me.

People would walk into my office and complain about everything under the sun. They were not making enough money, they were not getting enough production done, they had labor problems, and there was a lot of complaining going on. After dealing with this assortment of problems, something started to emerge. Everybody had the same base problem, regardless of what they initially came in for. They all had the following underlying deficiencies in their operations;

• a general lack of organization
• no game plan
• no written schedules to follow
• no respect their time or the time of others
• no mid range or long range goals
• no cohesiveness of actions
• no set standards
• no big picture in place

It seemed that all of the people that walked into my office, all suffered from the same, malady, they didn’t plan to fail, they just failed to plan. Failing to plan is just another way, perhaps a kinder way to say this, if you do not take the time to do it right, spend the time to actually think about what you want to do, the chances that you are going to fail, shoot sky high, just ask my clients.

I am not the kind of person that likes the one size fits all approach, but when it comes to dealing with time, I have to take the low ground on this one. If I have met anyone that can not benefit from over hauling how they deal with time, it must have been a very long time ago because I certainly can not remember the meeting.

I am going to go on record as saying that if you are reading this piece, you can and will benefit from looking at how you deal with your time and the benefits you are going to derive from the resulting changes.

Some of the base changes you will want to start to make are these:

• look at your time as the valuable commodity that it is and start to give your time the respect it deserves
• spend time on thinking about how to parcel out this non renewable resource
• look at spending your time as you would your money, you want the best possible return on your investment
• before you invest your time, spend an appropriate amount of time reviewing your choices and weighting them against other activities that are also vying for your attention

The reality of most of our current lifestyles is that we will not be able to complete all of things we would like to do before we are unable to do them, regardless of what that reason may be. I believe we all have to come to that realization in order to come to terms with our diminishing supply of time and our ever increasing wish list of things to do.

Keeping this reality in mind, it is paramount for our happiness and general well being that we find a way to do the most things we can in life and make sure that in that group of things we do, we mange to squeeze the maximum number of our favorite things in.