Time Management

Bismillah al Rahman al Rahim

In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.

Want to talk to you today about a topic which we all like to talk about, which is managing time. So let me ask you this question, do you think that you are a great time manager? And if you answered yes, then let me ask you to do something. If you are a good time manager, I want you to give me five extra minutes today. Can you do that? Obviously not. Because you can't manage time, the first rule to understand about time management is the time cannot be managed. Time is a factor of the Earth's rotation. And we have no control over that. So what can we manage, we can manage our priorities, we can manage what we do with the time.

So first,

is to write down your life goal. Because if we want to judge whether we are managing time, well or not, we have to judge in the context of well, compared to what what is well? And how do you judge that by having a clear life book, to give you a way of arriving at that, imagine that today is your last working day in your organization. And there's a farewell party for you. And a friend of yours is giving a speech about you and your achievement. And this friend of yours knows you very well has seen your whole career. And he or she is talking about you and saying all that you achieved. Now ask yourself, what would you like to hear in that speech? Because what you would like to hear in that

speech is what you must start preparing for from today.

Question therefore ask yourself is what difference Do you want to make?

So how do you begin that, the way to begin that is to first take a snapshot of where you are now. And the way to do that is to create a time lock. How do you create a time lock, use the the table that I have shown you on the slide here.

Start with your day, from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed. So say for example, you wake up at 430 in the morning,

every half hour in your time log record what you do

every single half hour for the whole day. So 430 The next one is five to 536 and so on. So as you're writing that, say for example, you're writing for 30 am trying to get a 5am still trying to get a 5:30am still trying to get up, right, so write down every half hour what you are doing. Then, when you come to the middle of the floor, you will come to say 930 don't put a big bracket and say 930 to five at work no, even at work 930 What are you doing? 10 o'clock? What were you doing? 1030 What were you doing? So you say what 930 to 10 o'clock, I was taking a call 10 o'clock, I was sick and say well, what was I doing at 10? I can't remember what Alright, so 10 to 1030 I have no clue even

black 1030 or 11, my we had a floor meeting. So we were at the meeting 11 to 1130 I took a tea break, not have to drink. So half an hour from 1130 to 12.

I took a pre lunch break

12 to 1230. I took a close to lunch break at 1230 to one I took the actual lunch break and then one to 130 I took a post lunch break and 130 to two I actually eventually got back to my workplace every half an hour what we're doing until you come to the end where reversely once you have your dialogue with you now do this calculation, I call this my effective time calculation, take the time log and look at his time log. From the time log you say you do this you have to make this equation number one is actual time minus maintenance time is available time. What is actual time 24 hours. What is maintenance time, all the time that you use in sleep and in activities related to maintaining

yourself so time to be in the bathroom in the shower.

time eating lunch tea breakfast dinner, whatever time in putting on your makeup, all of that, including on include also in this any commuting time if you drive your own car, you drive your own vehicle to your watch that include that time also unless you are doing something value adding in addition to the driving. I don't I don't suggest doing too many things in addition to driving because not good. But

for example, if you're listening to some useful stuff

On your way to work, that's a different matter, otherwise, your commuting time also, especially if you're driving your own way, but if using public transport, and during that time while you're sitting in the train to the bus or the taxi or whatever, if you are making use of that time, effectively, then don't put it in here, then it's not maintenance time it goes somewhere else. But otherwise maintenance time is your sleep, your eating your bathing and your other maintenance activities. So actual time, 24 hours minus maintenance time, guess how much that would be eight hours of sleep, or your take an hour to upload all of that said 10 hours. So actual time is 24 hours

minus 10 hours is 14 hours is available time. Now take these 14 hours available time and look at your time log and see how much of that available time was spent in pursuit of my life goals. And that's the reason why you realize now why it is important for you to have the life goal statement ready, before you can do these activities. So look at the life goal statement from the life goal state, but look at your time locks and say, out of all these time slots, how much of this time was spent in pursuit of my life quotes, that time is your effective time.

Your effectiveness and life depends on how you can maximize your effective time.

I'm going to teach you now three tools to maximize 80 to maximize effective time, prioritization delegation, and learning to say no three important things. First one, before you go anywhere, just ask yourself, do you really want to do this, if you really want to do this, you got to get serious about it. So the first one prioritization,

I'm showing you the graph of what we call the effort impact analysis, draw this graph effort on one axis impact on the other axis, remember, the radical principle which is 20% of what you do produces 80% of the results. So, if you if you make this for blocker, this great, you will find that you have activities, which are high effort and low impact, low impact, high effort and low impact, which I call waste, you have other activities, which are low effort and low impact, I call them do is you have to you have a third set of activities, which is high effort and high impact.

And I call that hard work. And you have other activities, which are low effort and high impact, which I call leverage. Now, take your time log,

look at the activities.

And look at this map. And look at the activities and say which goes well, out of the time log which activities go into your waste, which activities go into hard work, which activities go into

leverage, which of the activities are low effort and high impact, maximize those because those are your leverage activities, which activities are high effort and remember effort is not only work effort is investment effort is time spent effort is actual energy spent. So all these three together and calling it effort. So which activities are high efforts, and low impact waste, eliminate the waste, the do if you have to have activities are what you delegate, if you have to do them, do them, you do it somehow these activities can be given off to somebody else who can do those activities instead of you. The hard work activities hire for time back, you want to earn a PhD, you have to do

a lot of work for that. But it's also high impact. At the end of the day, you have a doctorate and you that that is good for your career. So you do a lot of hard work. And then you have activities, which are low effort and high impact. What is your connection with your Creator, for example, high leverage activity, what are what is your customer service, like? Doesn't take much effort to be good to customers, but huge leverage, so low effort, high impact, look at those activities. Second tool, what I call the three by three rule. And that's the priority add the rule, which is very interesting story behind this story is that the chairman of USD called up a friend of his and he said that I've

just taken over as the as the chairman of the company, I find that people are wasting a lot of time, and I need you to come and run a series of time management workshops.

I don't have time to run time management workshops, but I'm going to tell you on the over the phone, quick rule, and at the end of the year, apply the rule and if you think it is worth it was worthwhile, then pay me whatever you think it is worth. And the story goes that they paid him $25,000 now I'm about to tell you this thing for free. So listen carefully. It's called the three by three rule every day when you come to work, sit at your desk and make a list of three activities that you need to do in

order of priority according to impact, please understand very clearly, again, go back to the other, the other grid, which is the effort impact analysis and say, depending on the impact in order of priority, which is the number one high impact activity that I must complete today, which is the number two and which is number three, do not put more than three activities on that list to begin with, start with that list every single morning, mix this, then start with the first activity, and continue until you finish it. And if you are interrupted, go back to it and complete it, then only go to the next activity, do not start an activity do not start on activity to until you have

completed activity one, if you want interrupted, as I said, Come back and complete that activity before you go to the next activity. Once you finish activity, one activity, then you will be activated to once you've finished activity two, then you go to the third one. And then if you have finished all the activities, and you still have time, then you add on a fourth one. And you do that but until you complete the activities, don't even look at the fourth activity. Now. Next morning when you come write a new list in order of priority, for example, in it don't don't just do it mechanically don't say today I have three activities I managed to complete only two. So by activity

three for today becomes activity one automatically tomorrow. No, it does not become automatic. You have to think about it and say should it be there or should it not be that for example, your activity three for today was to visit this friend of yours who is in hospital. Now tomorrow in the morning, you might discover that the ven got well and he left and he's gone home so the opportunity to visit him is gone. So don't just put an activity there. Just because it's a leftover from the previous day, every day start a new list three activities in order of priority, which you will do one after the other one after completing the next one. And for that it's important you can use this

matrix which I call the urgent and important matrix, this urgent and important matrix has to do you take again your activities which you are going to do and put them on the on this matrix, you will have activities which are very urgent, but not important. These are either emergencies or is activity which you really don't know the phone rings, you don't know whether it's urgent or important or what but because it is ringing, you pick up the phone, you have this conversation, the conversation might have been a complete waste of time. And you just lost that time, which could have been used for something more useful. So therefore urgent, but not important. Number two is urgent

and important. Those are emergencies. Those are things which you just have to drop everything and do it your car, you didn't maintain it for a long time, and suddenly breaks out in the middle of the highway. Now you have to leave everything else and attend to the car because you can't just leave it there. Then you have a third set of activities which are neither urgent nor important.

in which you can you can really club quite a lot of stuff that we do on a daily basis, which is neither urgent nor important. And then you have activities which are not urgent, but very important. These are the developmental work. These are the developmental activities that we have that book that you should have read which you have been torturing yourself, I must read this book, but you haven't read it comes in there, your daily physical exercise, your maintenance of your body comes in there, your maintenance of your vehicle comes in there. All kinds of developmental activities is no sword hanging over your neck over your head. If the activity is important, you also know that but it's not

urgent, because nobody's paying you for it directly and immediately, you tend to ignore it and push it back. things which are important but not urgent. If they are ignored long enough, they will escalate into the upper upper upper quadrant, which is urgent and important they become emergencies. You don't you don't maintain your body one day you have to be in hospital. Go straight up. activities which are neither urgent nor important should effectively be eliminated. While it is either urgent or important while you're doing the moves that activities are urgent but not important. Usually it's a good idea to delegate them. Because somebody is in your face you have to

get get rid of them delegate focus on activities which are important but not urgent, because they are the most beneficial of all the activities. And if you focus on them early enough. And if you focus on them intelligently enough, you will find that the number of emergencies in your life also will come down because that's the whole issue and the whole benefit of planning

will go to the next tool, which is the magic word no. Develop assertiveness. Do remember, aggressiveness is negative assertiveness is positive. aggressiveness is when other people's rights are violated. assertiveness is self expression through which you stand up for your own rights without violating the rights of others. And that's why it's very important to be assertive. Do not hesitate to say no if you do

Don't hesitate to say no, then you will find that you people will take you for the rights people will will impose on you people will take away your time. And then you will be left with nothing. So say no, but how to say no without hurting people say no by saying yes, just I would love to give you my full attention. But I can't do that now. So why don't we talk about this and set a time? Why don't we talk about this at 4pm stand up point for interrupting somebody walks in unexpected visitors just stand up and talk to them and keep walking towards the door as you talk to them. And they will get the message. make a habit of never interrupting anybody. Don't interrupt people. Don't

drop in on people. Take always take appointments. I say if you have nothing to do, go to a chair, this is not the space for you to do when you have nothing to do. That way people will also respect your time, they will respect your space, and they will not waste your time either. Number four is never forward things don't forward cheat meals. Delete the ones you receive unread and tell everybody that this is what happens that you will not forward chain meals or and last. fifth one is always call ahead and make an appointment, tell the person what you want to talk about. Tell the person what you want, and how long you will need for that is very efficient to meet people after

making appointments. Because then they are prepared for you, they're mentally prepared for you, they're freed the time to meet you. And also if there was any pre work to be done in terms of thinking about whatever it is that you want to meet them about, they have had an opportunity to do that pre work. And the meeting is always much more beneficial, much more useful. just dropping in on somebody. Just walking into somebody's office is always a useless thing to do. It's just a waste of time. And last and very, very important. Make punctuality and absolute obsession. Time is a number. Time is not open to interpretation. Nine o'clock is nine o'clock, nine o'clock is not something to

me and something else to do. So always, always, always remember, it is very, very important to function in the final analysis. Remember, it's not about time at all. It's about life, your life.

I remind myself and you brought a lovely quote, which I don't know who the author of this quote is, but it's a beautiful quote. It says what your thoughts because they become words, Watch your words. They can become actions, watch your actions, because they become habits, what your habits because they become character and watch your character because it becomes your destiny. And that's what I remind myself when you

let us watch our character because that is our destiny. Thank you very much.