Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life lies in eliminating the nonessentials. Chinese proverb
Have you ever wished that you could have 30 hours in a day? If you are like most people, more often than not, you are plowing through your day full speed with all possible energy and ability and yet at the end of the day, you still find yourself floundering for enough time to do everything you had wanted to do.
Time is a unique resource. Every person every day is assigned the same amount of time. The amount of hours you have in a day cannot be accumulated like cell phone rollover minutes. You can’t turn it on or off, and it can’t be replaced. It has to be spent at the rate of sixty seconds every minute by every person.
The secret then in accomplishing all you need to do does not lie in being given more minutes, but it lies in excellent time management. Excellent time management principles come from knowing what your goals are, setting priorities which would bring about those objectives and putting them into action. It comes from identifying what is urgent versus what is important. The important priorities are the ones that will help you accomplish your goals in life and business but rarely must be done today, while the urgent tasks may not help you achieve your objectives but always call for instant action.
The best starting place to improve your use of time is to understand the extent of control to which you have of the time available to you. No one has total control over a daily schedule, because someone or something will always make demands (These are the urgent things); however, everyone has some control, and probably more than you realize. If you learn how to utilize this control that you do have for the important priorities, you are well on your way to excellent time management. Excellent time management will take you on the road to-ward success.
Barbara Eldridge, President & Founder of Mind Masters