Time management 101

By Nelson Searcy

We all have the same number of hours in a day. The way we choose to manage those hours will either help us live a life of effectiveness and success or lead us down a path of frustration and repeated failure. Of course, we would all rather use our time to create that first scenario, but many of us just don’t know how. You probably didn’t learn much about time management in school. I didn’t. Even though understanding how to use our time is essential to success, it is something we’ve been left to educate ourselves on. And the truth is that many of us don’t take the time to get that education.

There’s an inherent paradox here. You have to invest some time in learning how to manage your time. But most of us are so overwhelmed with daily concerns that we think we can’t carve out a few minutes to study time management principles. I can promise you this: If you will make a small commitment to learning how to better shape the hours God has given you, you will see hours exponentially added back into your day. To get you started, here are three principles you can begin applying right away:

• Learn To Live Off-Peak
• Automate
• Ask: “What’s The Best Use Of My Time Right Now?”

LEARN TO LIVE OFF PEAK

Learning to live off-peak means that you get into the habit of swimming upstream. You go against the crowd. When everyone else is rushing to do one thing, you do something else. Last Mother’s Day, I violated this principle. Not adhering to my own time management rules, I went shopping for a Mother’s Day gift on the Friday before the holiday. Over my lunch break (another mistake), I made my way from my office in midtown Manhattan to the 34th Street Macy’s, i.e. “The World’s Largest Department Store.” Surprise, surprise – It was packed! It seemed like everyone in New York had decided to shop for their mother during their lunch break on the Friday before Mother’s Day. What, at any other time, would have been a nice 30 to 45 minute shopping experience, turned into an hour and a half ordeal.

How did I get myself in this situation and end up wasting valuable time? By not living off-peak. Since it makes sense that the store would be crowded then, I should have gone at a completely different time – early in the morning or even the week before. When everyone else is doing a particular “something,” make sure that you are doing “something else.” For example:

• Never go to the post office or bank during your lunch break
• Avoid the DMV at the first of the month and the end of the month
• Take the first doctor's appointment of the morning
• If you are flying on a Monday, take the mid-morning or noon flight to avoid the Monday AM rush
• Arrive at the office before everyone else, to avoid the traffic and get in some uninterrupted work time

Once you start practicing this principle, you will find dozens of ways to apply it. By simply retraining yourself to live off-peak, you can take back some control over your time. This one principle can save you 3 to 4 hours a week. And it didn’t take much time to learn, did it?

AUTOMATE

I love the late-night infomercial where the guy puts the chicken on the iron stick, places it in the revolving rotisserie, turns the dial and says, "Set it and forget it!" I don’t think he even realizes that he’s giving millions of insomniacs a great time management tip. Just think about it: How much time would you save if you could automate some of the tasks that eat it away? What are you spending time on right now that you could “set and forget?”

Bill paying was my first lesson in automated living. I used to spend at least a couple of hours every month paying down a stack of bills – opening each one, writing a check, addressing the envelope, putting on the stamp, writing the amount in my checkbook… you know the drill. Then, one day, I was reading a book by David Bach (one of my favorite financial writers) and he mentioned that most utility companies offered a bill regulation service. They would adjust your bill so that you could pay the same amount each month. His point was on budgeting, but it struck a time management nerve with me. If you could predict how much your bills would be each month, you could pay them automatically by setting up auto-withdrawal or having the bank send over a check. (Another time management short cut – You can send a check online much faster than you can write one). Little did I know, the banks were one step ahead of me. They were willing to automatically pay all of my bills from my bank account every month. So now, I auto-pay everything from bills to my tithe.

The great thing about this principle is that you can take it far beyond bill paying. I am constantly looking for things to automate. I have automated my Mac by having it open the three programs I use most when it powers up. I have automated my cell phone voice mail by having voice messages automatically sent to me as text messages. I have automated prescriptions – the website for my pharmacy allows me to set-up for refills to be automatically sent. Same thing for my daily wear contacts. And for my . . . well, you get the point. If I can automate it I will. Set it and forget it!

Think about what you could automate in your life. How could you use this principle to save yourself valuable time? Once you get the automations set up, you will realize that you have bought yourself several hours each month. What will you do with them?

ASK: “WHAT'S THE BEST USE OF MY TIME RIGHT NOW?”

This nine word question can change everything. When you get up in the morning, ask: What's the BEST use of my time right now? (Devotions, anyone?) When you first arrive in the office, ask: What's the best use of my time right now? When it's date night with your spouse, ask: What's the best use of my time right now? (Hint: Put away the iphone and give your spouse your undivided attention.) As you gain those extra hours from automating and living off-peak, ask: What’s the best use of my time right now? Get the idea?

Asking this one simple question will help you focus on what is most important in every situation. You’ll get to work on the projects you’ve been putting off, and get them finished. You’ll have conversations you’ve been pushing to the back burner. You’ll spend less time surfing the internet aimlessly. As you get into the habit of asking yourself what the best use of your time is, you’ll learn to prioritize efficiently all day, every day. For me, this question has become a prayer. I'm constantly asking God to show me: What's the best use of my time right now? He gave us the time, we are simply stewards. It’s only right that we would seek His insight on how to focus and shape each hour.

In the few minutes it has taken you to read this article, you have learned how to save yourself 15 to 20 hours a month. Pretty amazing, huh? A few small lessons can go a long way. When you consider just how precious your time is – and how accountable you are going to be held for what you do with it – you realize the importance of learning effective time management. Peter Drucker once said, “Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.” Tomorrow, you’ll be given 24 hours. How can you shape them for their highest and best use? Start by living off-peak, automating everything you can and asking “What is the best use of my time right now?” If you do those three simple things, you’ll get more out of tomorrow’s hours than you did today’s – and you just might find yourself further down that path toward effectivenes and success.