When will you have time?

Too many people have the concept that time management is about being able to do so many more things within the 24 hours that each day has. Put another way, in the world of work, it seems to be a euphamism for getting more and more out of an already overworked employee.

We are constantly told we shouldn't waste time or we should save time or manage our time more effectively. Ok, so firstly let's consider the flipside of these statements. John Lennon said that time you enjoy wasting isn't wasted. As for saving time - what are you saving it for? You can't suddenly decide to save 20 minutes by not filing papers and add the time onto the weekend, or save days or weeks up to add onto the end of your life. And as for managing time more effectively - time just is. It happens without us, effective or otherwise.

But, to be more serious about time management, it is not about having the time to do more things. It is about having the time to do the things that are important to us. It is about recognising and eliminating the things that clog up our day and stop us from doing those things we want to do. It's a self perpetuating cycle that we get into. We spend too much time doing things that are urgent, rather than important. And how often are we allowing others to dictate what is urgent! Ok, so paying a bill that you overlooked may be urgent, but how many other things in the day are other people's priority rather than yours. How many of these things stop you from moving on those things that are important to you.

We are all experts at avoiding doing the things that really matter - whether at work or home. Then we end up leaving them until they are urgent. And then we rush them. Then we wish we'd had more time to spend on something that really was important to us.

The title of Brian Tracy's book "Eat That Frog" comes from an old saying that if the first thing you do in the morning is eat a live fron, you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that it is probably the worst thing you'll do all day. Ok, so I'm not saying that the important things in your life are as awful as a eating a frog, but the metaphor works well. I know I've often spent hours clearing away the "small" jobs, so that I can get down to the bigger, more important one. Then the day has passed or something "urgent" has landed on my desk that simply must have my attention now.

Let's face it, there will never be enough time to do absolutely everything. And when you get right down to it, a lot of the stuff really doesn't matter. In one job I found that staff could spend up to 40% of their week filing forms. Then I found that they only ever needed to refer back to these forms once in a while. So, I asked them not to file in order for a while - just let them pile up. The one time that they needed to find a form, they went through the pile in about 15 minutes and found what they wanted. Ok, so 15 minutes may seem like a long time. But considering 3 people were spending up to 50 hours a week filing, you get the idea. And those 50 hours were used improving the quality of their work.

So, take a look at how you spend your time. What's cluttering up your hours? What needless tasks or routines are stopping you from doing the things you want to do. Try not doing them for a while. Eat your frog and get straight down to working on the things that are really important.

And remember - we may find renewable sources of energy, we may reverse global warming, we may even find a very inexpensive way to halt aging. But a minute will always be 60 seconds and a day will always have 24 hours. And when we are old, we will not be wishing that we'd spent more time doing insignificant tasks - we will only be wishing that we'd spent more time doing the things that really mattered to us.