British law sets the start of time as September 3^rd 1189. All POSIX based operating system sets the start of time as Midnight, January 1^st 1970 CUT. Apple set the start of time on Macintosh operating systems at Midnight, January 1^st 1904 as it saves one equation necessary to determine if it is a leap century or not. For some of us time started the day we were born. For others, time started when man first started telling stories that were passed down. Some believe time started with the (ever increasingly disproved) Big Bang Theory and others may believe that there was only time before the Big Bang. How can anyone manage something so overwhelming as time. Is “Time Management” and oxymoron?

 

Time management is a skill I have yet learned to master but I would not consider it an impossible task. At some times I do very well managing time. In fact if it wasn’t for outside influences I would have no problem completing all of my day to day work in a few hours. What takes most of my work time is one time only requests or demands upon my time. What I was taught was to build in to your schedule time for these external times and budget your time accordingly. One way to free up time is to not go to meetings where you are not needed. Read the minutes of the meeting, talk to someone that encapsulates it, or just ignore it totally. If you take stock of your time; log what you do every day; you will find that meetings and phone calls (or e-mail) are the biggest time waster of your day.

 

Stop doing the time wasters. For example I’m on a group list at work and get 20 or so messages a day from the list server. I filter my mail so that any from that group is diverted to a sub folder in Outlook and I never read it until the end of the day. If I am busy it can wait to be read another day or two. Do not attend every meeting, and if you do attend them make sure there is at least 15 minutes apart from the last meeting. If you hold meetings wear a watch or watch your phone, start and end on time.   Once people learn your meetings start and end on time they will be there promptly.

 

Ron