The Importance of Time Management

The importance of Time management cannot be over exaggerated. Time is our most valuable asset.

Time is what we want most, but what we use worst. ~ William Pennr
We cannot manage time but only the activity that we do in that time. We each have 168 hours a week. And how we use our time
depends upon the quality of our health, relations and wealth in short the importance of time management determines the quality of our life.
While looking at the importance of time management we do well to think of the Pareto principle. Vilfredo Pareto was an Italian economist at the turn of last century and observed that 80% of results came from just from 20% of activity, so by knowing that we can spend more time on those things that do work.
So we can manage our time we need to know how we are spending it. Begin by writing down how you are spending your most valuable asset time. By day and in 15 minute segments. Put down everything from comfort breaks, exercise and sexercise! Emails, gym etc.

When I do this it always amazes me how much time disappears! Now split those activities into 3:
A, Important; Work, relationshipsr
B, Essential to life: Eating, sleepingr
C, Non essential, Maybe watching TV.

How we use our time will either move us towards, sometimes slowly sometime quickly, our goals/plans/dreams or away.
Nielsen reckons that the average amount of TV watched in the US is four hours 35 minutes a day. But the TV is on eight hrs and 15 minutes per day for the average American. Nielsen provides the time to the networks and the advertisers so Nielsen business is based on the accuracy of their figures. That is 31.5 hours a week. If the Internet is included the figure is over 151 per hours per month, as much time as the average job!!!

Now put down how you’d like to be spending your time, would you like to spend more time relaxing, walking, partying, chatting to friends. Now are you seeing the importance of time management. By managing your time appropriately you get to do more of the things you like to do. If your not sure have a look at How to Enjoy Life Morer
Ask which activities help me get close to my goals because each activity is taking us toward our goal or away from it.
You might say I haven’t got time to plan, well guess what? You will fail to achieve what you do want because if we don’t plan, we plan to fail.
Planning is of the highest importance of time management and will save us four to 10 times of time that it takes us to do.
Ask

What can I simplify?
What can I eliminate?
Could I delegate?

The little things matter. Let’s take a topic that I started to do when I got divorced, ironingr
Say a goal is to climb Everest but instead of training for say two hours a week we iron instead. We will find that we will have ironed a mountain of clothes and not climbed Everest. Most things don’t need to be ironed and shirts you can get someone to do for pence. Now I pay someone to collect my laundry do the washing and ironing and the gardening. It’s too hot for me to garden here, in the Philippines! which something that I love in England,

In my blog I share a wonderful and informative video on the Secret of Time Management

There’s a great book ‘the 4 hour Workweek’ by Timothy Ferris who postulates that you can do a full job but rarely go to the office and subcontract some and eliminates most activities.
While we’re looking at the importance of time management we need to keep track of our performance. If we’re currently spending 1 hour a week with our significant other and we’d like to be spending 14 hours a week, it’s not going to happen ove
ight, so we need to set spending 14 hours a week with our significant other as a goal.

A goal has to be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Tangible.
Where most people who set goals (and that’s only three per cent of us) fall down is in being realistic.
Most of us are employed either by someone else or ourselves so lets look at a very important issue Billable hours.
A brother of mine was partner in a big accounting firm and when he was promoted he was told that the partners where expected to have 80% billable hours, because they had huge resources to cover marketing, secretaries and managers to cover all the office work. But in order to produce 28+ billable hours, each of the partners had to work 70+ hours! You might ask why, well there’s always the unforeseen and if you’re self employed then there are a myriad of things that we need to do, marketing, quoting, invoicing, book keeping, making sure you’re up to speed in a market place that’s changing and that’s not counting problems with computers and all sort of other things.
So how can we hit our goal?
Do you increase the hours worked, by working longer?, increase the amount charged, or change or reduce the goal. The boss usually isn’t too keen on the latter!
So how do we stay on track to achieve our goal?

From Pareto’s principle we know that 80% of work comes from 20% of clients. However did you know that in most companies 120% of the profit comes from just 10% of clients, with 70% of clients breaking even and the rest costing money.
When looking at the importance of time manage it’s best to start asking some basic questions. Why are you in business for?

Something to do, a jobr
Earn an Incomer
Build an empire?
To maximise profit in the shortest time?

Whatever your answer you can get there quicker by knowing your high pay off activities. If you’ve lost your enthusiasm for your job and would like to Recapture Your Entusiasm for your Job an Life post will help.

In business these will probably be:

Planning and goal settingr
Prospecting
Face to face meetingsr
Track and measure performance (relationships feedback)
Coach and mentor teamr
Personal development (mind and body)

Time eatersr
The biggest is e-mailr
Next the phoner
Social Networkingr
While we’re looking at the importance of time management we need to address; How to manage the things that ‘eat time’? Have an answer service, or maybe pick up mail three times a day.
Each time that we change activity our downtime is 15 minutes, so by changing what we’re doing to read a mail, if we do that 12 times a day we’ve literally wasted three hours!
Everything and each business has KPI’s, key performance indicators, know what yours are and track.
Keep it simple:

How manyr
How much

Use KPI’s for every area of your life, health, relationships, and wealth

Now we have covered the importance of time management remember: We get what we focus on so focus on what you desire. And if that’s quality time with your loved ones. Manage you time so you spend your time there.
So if you hear yourself say I have no time, know that, that is a choice and that you have as much time as anyone else and it’s a question of how you choose to use your time. To help make the best use of your time register for the free mini course

Once you have mastered time, you will understand how true it is that most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a year – and underestimate what they can achieve in a decade! ~ Anthony Robbins