When did you realise that your TIME is not yours

To begin, I would like to ask a question – who controls your time? Just before you respond, let’s consider the following.

Everyone has a daily schedule, and all the activities in there; we have put in either consciously or unconsciously. When we fail to consciously create a schedule, the universe creates one for us because nature does not permit vacuums. So the people we meet suggest activities and fill our day with them. 

A friend suddenly calls you up. “Hey, are you free?” If there’s nothing happening already, they suggest one. “Wanna grab a drink at Danny’s.” Now you have to be somewhere. Same with the Television. It comes on, and then 5 hours later, you are still clutching the remote and laughing out loud. There is that infinite ability of some events to take hold of you and chew you out until there’s nothing left.

That is what happens when you go to work for someone else; your 8-4 or 9-5 schedule is one that they have made for you. The rest of the day is split up between TV, religious activities, rest, family responsibilities and time with friends. We have great excuses to participate in these activities, and oftentimes, we don’t feel like we have control over these things. So, we live out our days without being responsible for our time.

Can’t you see? Your time almost always belongs to someone else.

Most people don’t have any control over the flow of activities in the day. As such, they just let things flow and have an easy life. The easy life implies that other people make the tough decisions for them and must dictate what life has to be; when to wake up, who to meet, when to eat and what results to be achieved. Think of factory workers who must inspect a thousand bottles each day for defects.

It’s an honourable job, no doubt. But all that time, just looking for defects. 

The workers put in half the day and get peanuts as remuneration, for which they must be grateful. Similarly, there are millions of people who must do multiple jobs each day to make ends meet. In a different lifetime, they would be hardworking. In today’s world, they are exploited, slavish workers.

Away from all that depressing talk about work. Let’s focus on time.

Time is a currency with which we can buy the quality of life that we want.

Whatever you give your time to grows, and it is only fair that you get proportionate value for the time you give. The truth is that not everyone can become an entrepreneur and then control their work lives. But we should be able to make rational choices about what we give time to. This is a well-known fact, but one most people never act on for one simple reason: humans love to be free!

If that sounded confusing, I understand. Give me a little while, and I’ll explain.

People don’t realise this, but freedom is the greatest facade of achievement known to mankind. It is an illusion that simply hides mediocrity.

It gives a false impression that to be free, you should be laid back and not have a worry in the world. Freedom should empower you to decide what works for you, especially if it proves to be effective momentously.

Think of this, every religious, political, social or cultural system promises real freedom, but only if you let them make decisions on your behalf. Each system you empower takes your time and enslaves you. Does this resonate with you?

Therefore, we are never truly free except if we decide to do the needful and take charge of our own lives. That, my friends, is the reason I am writing this piece: to make the transition easier for you. To help you to take responsibility for your own time and life.

True freedom isn’t an absence of work or struggle but the ability to choose the one that benefits you the most, since, technically, we could never stop working or struggling.

 True freedom is consciously deciding what you do with your time.

My promise to you is not an instant miraculous change in your abilities to manage your time better.

That would be deceptive.

What I can assure you is that the guidelines I will share with you below work and are very useful. With practice, you should see some results in under a week of practice.

Remember, there is no greater cause on earth than using your time wisely and profitably. And don’t let anyone convince you otherwise.

 

“Time management is not a peripheral activity or skill. It is the core skill upon which everything else in life depends.”

Brian Tracy

 

Everyone has the same amount of time

The bus driver wakes up at 4 am every day. An hour later, she is at work, transporting people to their various destinations. On the same day, the CEO of a multimillion-dollar enterprise wakes up at 6.30 am. An hour later, he is returning from his routine workout. He will arrive at his office at 9 am and leave whenever he wants. On the other hand, our bus driver must work till 9 pm or later. 

Despite the time difference in the work schedule of these two individuals, one is affluent, and the other is not. One person gives more hours at work and yet earns less. I am certain that you can also find a thousand and one examples from your immediate environment. All these speak to the fact that there is a certain value to time. While time is a universal phenomenon, its value is individualised. No two people have the same value in their time.

Yet we all have the same amount of time in our day. The strongest person on earth has the same amount of time per day as the richest person and everyone else you can imagine. Two people in the same office might have different perceptions of time. To one person, it’s a fast day, while to the other, it’s a pretty slow day. Yet it’s the same day and the same number of hours.

Time is the greatest illusion that exists in the world. It is not tangible, but we give it such importance because it is a measure of our lives. It is not my intention to get all philosophical, and I will not attempt to describe the concept or nature of time. However, I will dare say that what makes the time worthwhile is the quality of events and experiences with which you fill up your day.

Each person is born into a reality that has 24 hours each day, but without a guide on how to harness the time and make it useful. While most people experiment with their time, others mirror proven strategies that can help them get the most out of the time they have. The choice of what you do with your time is yours. 

 

Is there such a thing as Time management?

Time management is the art of harnessing opportunities and creating the best possible outcomes. It is a skillset you can acquire and use to your advantage.

You too can build skills which enable you to use your time more productively. The truth about mastering time management is that it does not require any levels of academic achievement or cognitive abilities.

Anyone can learn this skill and master it. The learnings in this document are easy and should produce results in very little time.

So, let’s not waste any more precious time defining things and cut right to the chase.

 

Time can’t be managed, activities can!

Time is a gift, and I am certain that you now have an idea whether you can use it productively or not. Time itself is intangible and cannot be handled, manipulated or managed really. However, people can manage the events and activities that happen within a certain time. 

It is my opinion that time management as a practice is only wishful thinking. So to master the art of time management, your focus needs to be on things that are within your control, that is, the individual activities that you perform, not the practice of managing time.

 

Don’t be a Time management maniac! Do what you can 

Time management is effective for giving you more control over your day. By nature, humans love to be in charge and can swiftly create habits and systems that manage all areas of our lives. This can make robots of us, little maniacs that will adhere to timing and schedules religiously. 

Such fears are reasonable and should not be taken lightly. However, the fear of ‘being extra’ should not stop people from trying. What I recommend is simple: “do what you can in the best way you can”. It is better to try and fail than not to try at all.

Efforts in time management may not always be very successful, especially for people who are just starting. Like in learning most arts, it takes many years to become proficient, during which each person must find what works for them.

So, let’s look at a few things together. Shall we?

 

Putting time to use effectively

“Johnny is entitled to an hour lunch break period. Like all the other staff in his workplace, he severely resisted efforts by the management to reduce the lunch break by thirty minutes. The staff maintained that one hour was barely enough time to have a decent lunch. Genuinely, he did spend the time eating at a nearby restaurant. 

Five years later, Johnny is married and has a child, Amanda. Lunch break coincides with the school closing time of the child. Rather than have lunch at the usual restaurant, Johnny makes the 10-minute drive to get Amanda home, eats a quick lunch with his wife and makes it back to work on time.”

Just a few years earlier, Johnny could not finish a decent lunch in an hour but now, he completes a twenty-minute drive, eats lunch and gets back to work on time.

The time did not change. Johnny’s priorities did.

Have you ever had such an experience?

If you have. What you witnessed is called Parkinson’s law, and it states that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion.

The human body is a wonder, and until you push it, you will never know just what you are capable of.

You see why the TV sessions never end. Gaming? Social media?

If there’s nothing on the schedule, anything goes really.

 

You can do your best and still fail

This is a reality that most people must face, no matter how many time management strategies you know and practice, you will encounter hiccups on the way.

Why am I telling you this?

Because I want you to be prepared.

Nothing works perfectly indefinitely. Things will surely go wrong after some time, and this cannot be avoided.

So in your time management practice, you will have setbacks, but be sure to keep going and not let this bother you.

It’s not your fault. If you need someone to blame, blame Murphy.

Murphy’s law states that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong and usually at the worst time.

Murphy’s law is due to a failure in several factors that are often beyond the control of the individual. An example is a foremost Physician in handling cases of the Ebola Virus who gets infected by the Virus and dies amid an epidemic. This was an actual story from Sierra Leone in 2015. The leading Ebola Doctor, Dr Shiek Umar Khan, died of an infection of the Ebola Virus. What a timing, right?

 

You can be so good that the results are bad

Think about this. You may do everything right, but the results tell another story. This is known as Illich’s law.

It states that “beyond a certain threshold, human efficiency decreases, even becoming negative.” 

This is also known as the law of diminishing returns. Doing the right things over and over again will eventually produce some bad results because people are not machines and need to unwind.

It is recommended to take a break every two hours of work.

It is estimated that after this period, people can no longer hold their attention very well.

At this point, I don’t think there’s any need to mention that the machine we call the human body, like a car, needs to be serviced regularly.  Feed well, eat healthy, sleep soundly, play, exercise, meditate, work. Do not neglect any aspect of your life.

 

Highly praised, so-called proven techniques may not work for you

We are all different on many levels. There is no single almighty formula for everything.

People have worked on the idea that there is a universal law that governs everything, but that is not true. Yet it is a dominant ideology which informs academic programs and most systems of learning.

Hence, there are uniform programs, games, and leadership principles across the world. Nonconforming establishments are seen as errant, protestant, rogue or rebellious. There is an effort to make us all alike through training and specialisation.

While this works well in many cases, in time management, each person must find what works for them. For instance, some people multitask effectively. They can complete more than one task simultaneously. Some other people will struggle with multitasking but thrive when working on a single task. So it is up to you to find what works for you, and we shall address that in another piece.

 

And I saved this one for last…

 Humans will avoid stressful situations at all costs.

Unfortunately, this is easy to achieve by just putting off what you ought to do till some other time that is more convenient or indefinitely.

This law of procrastination is also known as Laborit’s law, and it stipulates that “Humans prefer to carry out simple tasks that give immediate satisfaction to avoid stress or inconvenience.”

Every time a task is postponed, a deficit is created, and the more things we leave undone, the more difficult it is to get any new tasks resolved. To succeed at time management, you must learn to address each task as it arises and bring each one to a conclusion before taking on other tasks.

I wish it were that easy a thing to do.

A simple rule I try to apply in dealing with procrastination is to have redemption days. It is a day for dealing with everything that has been put aside. For me, it works, and you could try it too. Just don’t have them spaced apart too long.

If it is too much stress to manage time and truly take our lives into our hands, then that explains why most people won’t do it. Even when equipped with the right tools, there are many who will stick to their old habits.

Could never be you, I’m sure.

You came all this way, so I must be such a captivating writer. (Wink wink)

Or you really want to make a change in your time management practices.

Then start already. One step at a time, and you will be quite advanced in no time.

I’ll be cheering for you.