ACHIEVING YOUR GOALS - TIME MANAGEMENT

Few days ago, I told you two major things that are needed to enable you achieve your set goals are DISCIPLINE and ACTION! You might have come across several steps/processes that enable you accomplish your goal.

These steps are nice and wonderful because I use some of them as well. I just thought about it a few days ago and I asked myself – Why do people not achieve their goals? They write them down, envision and all that. A year later, those goals are still written in paper unaccomplished! The big question is ‘WHY’? DISCPLINE and ACTION!

Over the next few days, I would break this down with you, so please stay with me. Let’s start with discipline! I am sure we all know its definition, so I’d just break this down for us.

DISCIPLINE OF TIME MANAGEMENT     
For me personally, time is the most expensive currency in the world! The value of the dollar, pound, and euro go up and down, but the value of time is constant. You can lose money in a business and get back even more, but once time is lost, it never comes back. This is one thing lot of people waste more than anything in the world.

If you want to be very successful and achieve your goals, TIME MANAGEMENT can never be over-emphasized. We waste precious time on many irrelevant things. Earlier, I had likened time to money so let me use that analogy to buttress my point. You would agree with me that good money management requires that you have a budget every time.

As salary earners or business owners, you do not make your budget after you’ve received money. Just like someone said, “Money is a good servant, but a terrible master”. You need to plan ahead, so that your money can be used well and effectively. The same goes with time. You need to plan your time ahead.

Sometimes, we do a “TO-DO LIST” for a day, week or month. We end up not accomplishing all because we do not allocate time ahead for these activities. For example, if you are to design a proposal, you should allocate some time to it for its completion depending on the scope of the proposal. This gives you a sense of responsibility and sense of urgency. When you do not, you might spend the whole day on it. At the end of the day, you might have finished it, but at the expense of other relevant things that you would have set to accomplish.

Let me give you a personal example, I started working with a prestigious company in Ajah a few months ago. I live on the mainland so you can imagine the distance from my house to the office. The first week, I noticed that I used to get to work a little late. I was to resume at 9am, so I figured that if I leave my house by 7:30, I would make it to work latest 9am on the dot. That did not work out as I got to work almost at 10am that day.

The next day I left by 7am, I still got late to work. The next day, I tried 6:30am and it was almost the same thing. I got to work before 9am, but tired. This is because of our regular Lagos traffic. This continued for a while, I would get to work before 9am, tired and that would definitely affect my productivity for that day. This can also have a rippling effect on my health as well.

One of my great strengths is that, I do not like complaining; I like solutions! I told myself, I have to figure a way out of this. Everyday, I would get to work tired and come back home tired, Haba!

I decided that henceforth, I would leave my house by 5:15am so that I can get to the office earlier. The first day I tried it, I got to the office at 6:20am. So I decided to continue that way. This is where discipline comes in. I sleep late every night because I read a lot at night, but I ensure I wake up at 4:30am to prepare and leave at the scheduled time. That way, I get to the office on time, not feeling tired or stressed. The days I still feel sleepy, I sleep either in my car or inside my office till it’s time for work.

On the other days, I either start work immediately or use the time to pray and study my Bible. Since, I resume early, I also ensure that I try to finish all I was to do in good time in order for me to leave the office early and avoid serious evening traffic. The days, I do not leave early, I stay back at work till late night and leave when the traffic has subsided.

I am very sure that this does not sound new to a lot of you, but stay with me because I want to add a little twist to this and at the same time buttress its importance.

Due to my kind of work, part of my written down goals entails daily practice on speaking, reading, presentation and writing skills. I have a plan to pray for at least two hours daily. Under normal conditions, this might not be achievable on a daily basis because ideally coming back from work might be very cumbersome. At the end of the year, I might be able to give a justifiable reason for not accomplishing these set goals. The big question is this – who bears the loss? It’s definitely me! So what did I do? I strategized!

I discipline myself to leave for work by 5:15am. I by-pass traffic hold-up and I have one hour before work. That is a good time to pray right? I always carry my books in my car. The days I do not leave early, I stay back in the office and either read or practice any of the skills I am working on. What am I doing? I am making good use of time irrespective of the challenge of traffic hold-ups. If I join traffic hold-up in the evenings, I get tired, angry and exhausted. Once I get home, I jump into bed and doze off till morning.

You might say- it’s because I have the liberty of staying back in the office or maybe flexibility of leaving at my own convenience. If you are to join a staff bus, colleague’s car or public transport, it does not matter. Carry your book along with you and read en-route. If you had exams, you would never tell them to be lenient with you because you are working.

All I am saying in essence is this; the goals you’ve set for yourself are possible to achieve. Identify the foreseen obstacles and proffer a way out of them ahead of time. Be disciplined to work at it. Make great use of time. Sometimes, we waste a lot of time on irrelevant things. We equally waste too much time on relevant things like I said earlier, because we do not schedule our time.

Allocate time to your personal “to do” list. Whatever you want to do, ensure you give it a date and time. For example, if you are reading a book, give yourself a target. You can say “I would finish reading this book within a week”. Do not stop there; break it down into daily time limits. “I would read three chapters a day” (depending on the size of the book). This way, you can easily judge if you are on track or not and have some level of responsibility to accomplishing this goal. Be disciplined to stick to it.

The beautiful thing is that this timing issue has a serious reflection on your personality. While we grew up, my Dad would always ensure we leave early for Church church on Sundays. Service was to start by 8:45am, but he would ensure we leave by 7am. Our Church was less than 30 minutes from the house, imagine! As kids, it always “peppered” us because we could not understand this. As we grew older, we had better understanding.

When you understand your environment, it is important you plan around it. In Lagos, when planning to go somewhere, you must always consider traffic as well. That was what my Dad always told us and he always lived it. If you invite my Dad to speak in your church and the service starts by 9am, be sure he’d be in your church by 8: 30am.

I remember the story he told us of a wonderful man of God they invited to his church on two occasions. The program would start by 6pm and even by 8pm, he would not have arrived. Everyone got a little bit tensed and worried. The man later came, preached powerfully, but was not invited again.

Also, if you are to give a presentation for 45 minutes, do not spend 55 minutes, no matter how interesting and hot you feel your presentation is. Like I said earlier, plan each point and allocate time ahead. People have greater value and respect for you when they see that you are a stickler to time.

I like to close with this statement, “Time is the most expensive currency in the world, have great value for it and spend it wisely. You would profit in the end”

 I would move on to other aspects of discipline as we move along in this series.