“How did it get so late so soon?” – Dr. Seuss*
“The best thing about the future is that
it comes one day at a time.” – Abraham Lincoln*
Time management can be a sort of oxymoron when you really think about it. Do you really manage time? Or is time a constant that you manage to?
Many businesses report initiatives in equivalent hours. While this helps in some ways, it hurts severely in other ways. Calendar days are unforgiving and do not recognize average equivalent hours.
Unlike the song, time cannot be saved in a bottle. Nor can it be saved for a later date. Time cannot be stopped and started like a stop watch. Averaging out that a task takes 4 hours may not take into account that the four hours is distributed across two actual days.
The good news is that everyone has the same amount of time to spend. No matter where in the world, everyone’s clock has 24 hours.
Here are three suggestions to make the most of a calendar day
- Plan ahead so that your “average hours” can be accomplished in the calendar days allotted.
- Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do now. It may only be 30 minutes, but if you wait until tomorrow, those 30 minutes now equals a full 8 hour day.
- Tasks stack up. If, on average, five tasks take one hour – you can still only do one task (or part of that task) at a time. The lapse time is five hours. Manage your calendar days to meet the required deliveries, whether it is a report or a product.
Time marches on. It always will in some form or fashion. You can’t save it. So spend it wisely as best you can based on today’s information.
Be intentional
Melissa
