How to Find Time to Do Things

Read on if you are one who always runs short of time. To achieve success in life, time management is a must. No one would disagree to this point. It is the critical aspect of accomplishment. What is the use of doing something excellently well if it is not done on time? I design brochures and newsletters, what is the use of delivering them to clients after their programme is over. What if newspapers do not reach you in the morning just because editors wanted to cover a bit more about something?

Thus time is the most critical aspect of delivering success. This article takes the concept of time management further from what has been discussed in my earlier article - how to manage time for success. There I had taken up the issue of the need to demystify time. The demystification of time helps us in understanding that time is an ally and not exactly our enemy. If we are able to practice the demystification of time, we will stop fighting against time and we would focus more on working along with it at partners. The idea is that you will not visualize time as facing you as an opponent staring at you in cold blood, but it would stand by your side staring at the task in hand.

Technically the time available to each one of us is the same. If that is the case then why is it that some are able to accomplish more while others fail to complete even the basic minimum. Everyone tells us that we need to manage time better. Everyone tells us to prioritize our work. We are often tired of hearing how great men succeeded in doing it and achieved all the greatness in life.

It is primarily important to understand that there is no harm in understanding these basic principles. But my problem lies somewhere much beyond this space. I realize that many of us end up with this problem. The problem does not actually lie in our failure to prioritize. We understand pretty well what is important and what is not. The problem simply lies in our not getting our work completed. The problem lies in being just in time. The problem lies in our failure to estimate the time we would require to accomplish an activity and in our ability to stick to that activity during the stipulated time with a single minded objective to complete it.

Most authors on time management tend to take an ideal scenario when they advice us on how to manage our time. They discount the fact that, for someone working under an erratic boss, time management continues to be a distant dream. They talk of individuals as being independent of his or her environment. This is not to say that authors do not address issues like work and family, they do, but in their overall scheme of how to manage time better they speak of the individual as a single entity who can regulate his life independent of others.

I believe that a more comprehensive solution can come only when you take ourselves as part of a larger whole - when we address the ways and means of time management as part of a larger scheme of things - as employees of an organization and working under an erratic boss, as being lazy ourselves.

This article does not seek to provide a solution as yet. It just seeks to raise a problem; solution to which has to be worked out. I look forward to your ideas in finding this solution. Your comments here and/or on my blog www.wordsofworth.wordpress.com are welcome in completing this journey of experiments with time. Tell me, how have you mastered it?