So much has been written about time management that you hardly have the time to read about it. There are numerous time management programs, processes, and tools. However, you can’t manage time, no matter how hard you try.
There are 24 hours in a day and they are ticking away, second by second, minute by minute, as you read this. You can’t save the hours or store them up. And when they are gone, they are gone! Never to be recovered. Never to be recycled and reused.
You can’t manage time, but you can manage your activities, what you do in the time you have. To successfully manage your activities, you only need to know two things: What to do FIRST and What to do NEXT.
To identify what to do, create a two-sided daily or weekly to do list. Label one side MUST DO and the other side SHOULD DO. On the MUST DO side, list all the things that are imperative. Things that must be completed. Things that are directly tied to your goals and responsibilities. On the SHOULD DO side, list all the things that should be done because they are important. Review each list and prioritize the items. Next, plan carefully and assign each item and amount of time for completion.
Start with the MUST DO list. Begin with the highest priority item and do it NOW—TODAY, without exception. When the time for that activity is up, STOP, and move on to the next activity. If you continue to work beyond the predetermined time limit, you are stealing valuable time from the next task. If that project suffers because of insufficient time, you’ll soon be in debt to countless hours of time that will never come. When you complete the MUST DO items, you can move on to the SHOULD DO items.
As time goes on, some of the things on the past SHOULD DO lists will transfer to the MUST DO list, but YOU will evaluate them and move them, not chance or the pressure of unorganized time. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “Finish each day and be done with it…. Tomorrow is a new day.”
