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.
