Have you ever found yourself too bored, passing hours of your day without being productive, or too busy, doing many activities under the pressure of a deadline? Have you ever asked yourself how is it that we’re in the 21st century with so many tricks, techniques, tips, calendars, checklists on how to manage ones’ time but very few of us are capable to manage our time successfully?
The concept of time management is all about how to get more things done, to do things faster, to be more productive, more efficient and to work better. Living a meaningful life has become coupled with the way you manage your time. If you ever get confused about how to successfully get the most out of your time; these are some clarifications.
The Philosophical Concept of Time Management
What is the true value of time? Why do we need to manage our time? How can we manage our time in a way we end up making the right decisions? These are some philosophical questions linked to this concept that question the entire process of time management.
The ancient philosophers perceived the ability to value our time as the ability to determine what we’re living for. The difference between those who tend to dedicate their life to volunteering and those who prefer to focus on their professional careers could be explained by how they describe the true meaning of life and thus how they value their time.
This idea of being active at the right time was highlighted by many philosophers. It is not about the number of activities we follow or by the desires we satisfy, rather it’s about the impact that they would have on our life. This was quietly illustrated in the Chinese culture for centuries since Chinese use to repeat this proverb” be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still”.
Time Management vs Self-Management
Time keeps on going whether we like it or not, that’s the fact that made many to suspect the validity of the concept of time management. It is quite illogical to think that we can manage something we have no control on. Rory Vaden, in his book, Procrastinate on Purpose, states that “there is no such thing as time management, really there is only self-management”. He believes that all our decisions are based on our emotions starting from our priorities, our schedules to our checklists, which highlights a perspective most importance; to gain control over his/ her time, one must be in charge of his/her emotions.
Multiply Your Time
While you’re evaluating how to spend your time you should mainly focus on three things: prioritizing, eliminating, and dividing.
Prioritizing is basically about brainstorming all your duties and putting them in categories: the’ must-to-do’ and the ‘not so necessary’. Then, relying on the deadlines you have, try to figure out which ones you can procrastinate.
As for eliminating, there are some activities that we think we must do them by ourselves meanwhile we can gain time, energy, and money either by canceling them or by assigning them to someone else (delegate it to someone more professional for instance). It is permission to refuse to fulfill a task to create more time.
If the task is a priority and it cannot be eliminated then the next question is can it be divided? If you have a difficult assignment to go through the best way to accomplish it effectively is to split it to sub-activities and to do each one at a time. Breaking it into double steps would make it much easier and would, certainly, help you avoid time pressure.
Following these four steps would help you multiply your time and concentrate on the most important tasks. In that way, you’re investing your time more effectively and efficiently.
Time Saves Itself
Often, whenever a person is late or they are running out of the time they tend to blame the current circumstances. However, what they are not aware of is that every one of us has full control over our life. This could be justified by the fact that we tend to refuse to do certain things pretending that we’re too busy and we don’t have much time, and once these activities turn to obligations, we end up finding enough time to accomplish them.
Time is indeed highly elastic, but we only have time to accomplish what is a priority for us. Not doing something because we don’t have time means we are not considering it as a priority. As Laura Vanderkam declared in her TEDx talk “we have the power to fill our lives with the things that deserve to be there.” In reality, we do have time but we don’t use much of it, that’s why there are sacrifices. Choosing whether to pass your time playing soccer, studying, or spending more time with your family is the hard part.
From the ancient philosophical concept of time management about how we can use our time to make our life meaningful with the modern tricks and tips, to get more things done, to work better and faster in an efficient way, the time has maintained the constant character of being precious.
Written by - Isslem Landolsi
Edited by - Vaibhav Sharma
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