Did you ever ask god - please god give me just 2 hours more in a day.. 24 hours are not just enough for me??? ( I did so recently and if you have never done that, there is no point in reading this post!)
I started thinking over it, why are these 24 hours not enough for me?? And I got the answer - ineffective usage of time (or read - no time management). Immediately, I opened my sticky note app in my phone and made a time table for myself, for an entire week. I added reminders in the phone to tell me what I should be doing at every 3rd hour of the day! I went to sleep, looking forward to start my "organized life" with the cracking of dawn the next day.
My to do list - do yoga (anytime thats best for that day), get ready, go to office, come back home, clean the utensils, make fresh dinner, spend some time socializing, talk to mom and dad, fix breakfast and dress for tomorrow, sleep. Believe me, 24 hours is just about perfect for that. Most of the people I know work along similar lines.
Was I successful in doing that??? NO - I was never able to do that!
Sticking to plans which I made for myself were also not easy for me (huh!).
I tried the first day, I failed! Nevertheless (old habits die hard...), I tried again the second day, I failed! Third attempt - I fail to begin the day as I planned, but somethings fell in place.
Fourth, fifth and so on.. same old story repeats every time!
There wasn't much change from what I was doing earlier to what I was doing now (or the only difference was - I was more depressed than ever!)
Come next Monday and I go to my yoga class and 2 things which my yoga teacher said, stuck a chord with me - 1. "Respect your limits" 2. "You cannot do everything everyday".
And I questioned myself - did I not respect my limits ? (I did, I din't make a stringent plan for myself!)
and what I want to do is what I have to do every day, how can I skip anything there?
I thought for this again! There had to be an answer to this. And yes, there was. I worried about ineffective time management while ignoring the more important factor of life - Energy Management!
Time and Energy are not mutually exclusive! Every single day of your life, you have 24 hours, but do you have the same energy levels everyday? Forget everyday, you don't even have same energy levels all through the same day. Then how can you do everything everyday? Did you just not cross your limits?
So what am I getting at??? I am simply pointing out the obvious fact - human body is not equal to a clock. period. (while some great people have trained their bodies to be like that, mediocre people like me have not been able to do so yet!)
I have realized that there are special magical hours in a day for me, everyday, when I achieve far more successful completion of my daily goals than all the rest of the hours put together (while the clock was ticking at the same rate!). My energy levels are far greater than any other time of the day. I have made my peace with it - there are time periods in a day, when I am simply good-for-nothing! I cannot start or finish anything! Then why should I include them in my time tables? This a dangerous mode because when I have not yet finished what I wanted to do in the previous hour, how can I just stop that and proceed with what I wanted to do in the current hour? And there it goes - the avalanche of missed time points rolling down!
So what are the steps in getting goals completed daily? Firstly, Realize what are the most active time zones of the day and plan your work (professional or personal) accordingly. I am talking for those who have almost fixed schedule daily. There is no second step.
A lot can be talked about and thought about effective energy management and I would definitely write up more on that as and when I can. But for now, channelizing work through the active time periods is doing wonders for me and I hope every one can make a note of it.
PS -- If this is a topic which is like basic principles of management classes, pardon my ignorance, for I have learnt this from my own experiences and not the management classes. All I know is it works.
love,
Raji
I started thinking over it, why are these 24 hours not enough for me?? And I got the answer - ineffective usage of time (or read - no time management). Immediately, I opened my sticky note app in my phone and made a time table for myself, for an entire week. I added reminders in the phone to tell me what I should be doing at every 3rd hour of the day! I went to sleep, looking forward to start my "organized life" with the cracking of dawn the next day.
My to do list - do yoga (anytime thats best for that day), get ready, go to office, come back home, clean the utensils, make fresh dinner, spend some time socializing, talk to mom and dad, fix breakfast and dress for tomorrow, sleep. Believe me, 24 hours is just about perfect for that. Most of the people I know work along similar lines.
Was I successful in doing that??? NO - I was never able to do that!
Sticking to plans which I made for myself were also not easy for me (huh!).
I tried the first day, I failed! Nevertheless (old habits die hard...), I tried again the second day, I failed! Third attempt - I fail to begin the day as I planned, but somethings fell in place.
Fourth, fifth and so on.. same old story repeats every time!
There wasn't much change from what I was doing earlier to what I was doing now (or the only difference was - I was more depressed than ever!)
Come next Monday and I go to my yoga class and 2 things which my yoga teacher said, stuck a chord with me - 1. "Respect your limits" 2. "You cannot do everything everyday".
And I questioned myself - did I not respect my limits ? (I did, I din't make a stringent plan for myself!)
and what I want to do is what I have to do every day, how can I skip anything there?
I thought for this again! There had to be an answer to this. And yes, there was. I worried about ineffective time management while ignoring the more important factor of life - Energy Management!
Time and Energy are not mutually exclusive! Every single day of your life, you have 24 hours, but do you have the same energy levels everyday? Forget everyday, you don't even have same energy levels all through the same day. Then how can you do everything everyday? Did you just not cross your limits?
So what am I getting at??? I am simply pointing out the obvious fact - human body is not equal to a clock. period. (while some great people have trained their bodies to be like that, mediocre people like me have not been able to do so yet!)
I have realized that there are special magical hours in a day for me, everyday, when I achieve far more successful completion of my daily goals than all the rest of the hours put together (while the clock was ticking at the same rate!). My energy levels are far greater than any other time of the day. I have made my peace with it - there are time periods in a day, when I am simply good-for-nothing! I cannot start or finish anything! Then why should I include them in my time tables? This a dangerous mode because when I have not yet finished what I wanted to do in the previous hour, how can I just stop that and proceed with what I wanted to do in the current hour? And there it goes - the avalanche of missed time points rolling down!
So what are the steps in getting goals completed daily? Firstly, Realize what are the most active time zones of the day and plan your work (professional or personal) accordingly. I am talking for those who have almost fixed schedule daily. There is no second step.
A lot can be talked about and thought about effective energy management and I would definitely write up more on that as and when I can. But for now, channelizing work through the active time periods is doing wonders for me and I hope every one can make a note of it.
PS -- If this is a topic which is like basic principles of management classes, pardon my ignorance, for I have learnt this from my own experiences and not the management classes. All I know is it works.
love,
Raji
totally agreed
ReplyDeleteEffective time management can drastically improve the quality of your everyday life and also I learned a lot from time management like reduction of stress,peaceful mind ,Increased Energy,stability in all aspects and better health....I really like this post :)
ReplyDeleteHi Raji,
ReplyDeleteI am here from your travel blog, good to be here too, Yes i could very well relate in many areas here, Yes, time management is an important area many fail miserably and then run here and there, I liked it but sorry No Yoga for me.
Keep writing.
Keep inform
I joined in
Best regards
philip
@Krish - I was insisting on understanding energy flow to do effective time management. I believe every one does it subconsciously and thats what I am trying to explore here.
ReplyDelete@Philip - I am very thankful for the visit to my blog and following me. Yes, time management is bonded with energy flow within us. I am reading and understanding that more. Will keep posting whatever my insights are. And regarding the shiny wording in th other blog - thanks for pointing it out. It was a conscious "wild" decision for a trial purpose, which even I do not see getting repeated again :)
Happy blogging!
aye aye.. so true..
ReplyDeleteread more such thoughts --> http://achu89.blogspot.com/