What are you doing with your time?

If there is a wish that I would want granted, it would be to have more hours in a day. Its amazing that with all this technology that we have nowadays we cannot recycle or reverse time. So in essence every second counts hence whatever you do in every second of the day should really be productive. A lot of us take this very lightly but that is what seperates the winners from the losers. The amount of time put into a particular task, in addition to discipline and focus determines its outcome. As if there was some sort of divine intervention, my bible reading for the day seemed to echo sentiments on time management. "See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil." (Ephesians 5vs15-16). The sequence in which you perform tasks on a daily basis has a profound effect on how much you get out of life. Its important for you to analyse what you are doing with your time and remove the things that are not productive in your day immediately. So how best can you do this? I have been following Tim Hindle's Essential Managers series, particularly "Manage your time". You must cost your time so that you see just how much money you lose by wasting time. To find out the cost of each minute, multiply your annual salary by 1.5 to include overheads and divide the total by the number of working hours in a year. Divide this total by 60. The only way you can make better use of your time is analysing how you currently use it and then make adjustments where necessary. Keep a time log for about a week stating exactly what you are doing and at what time. You would be suprised how much time you are wasting away. Have a long term vision and whatever you do with your time in a day should be contributing to that vision in one way or the other. "You cannot decide what to deal with today unless you know where you want to be tomorrow. Any plan to improve your use of time depends on being clear about your goals." Tim Hindle. Jason Drew, CEO of Dialogue SA, says one must commit to an outcome then ask "What do I need to make this happen tomorrow?" Then start doing it today. According to the CEO, tomorrow is long term if you want change. If you just sit down for one minute and then say "right what can I do in the next hour? What phone calls can I make? What things can I do to change the week ahead? Then you can achieve more in an hour than in a whole week of tomorrows!!! So I ask you again, what are you doing with your time?