K M Ganesh
( KM Ganesh graduated with a
Gold Medal in M.Phil from the Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning after
completing his B.Sc and M.Sc in Chemistry. Currently he is pursuing his Ph.D.
in Chemistry from SSSIHL. He
is an excellent dramatist lending his rich voice to most of the leading
characters in dramas enacted before Swami. Known for his witty remarks and
quick sense of humour, Ganesh is also a brilliant athlete having the unique
distinction of winning all racing events at the University. This champion
runner who races against the milliseconds of time, discusses in this articles
some simple techniques for better time management.)
Imagine! Searching for Kutub
Minar in the city of Chennai. Driving to reach Taj Mahal, you are exploring the
city of Bangalore! You may be driving at a top speed in the latest sports car,
even over taking the other cars but will you ever reach your destination? NO.
Why? Because you are driving with the wrong map in a different city.
Even a little introspection
will reveal that most of us are living in the insanity of trying to speed up things
but not doing what we are really meant to be doing. Why? We have equated time
management with doing things faster. Smart phones, faster cars, latest
technological gadgets, …yes technology has made our world small but the
critical point is not to do things faster but to do first things first! Have we
prioritized our agendas? Some have 10 priorities in life…..they actually have
no priority at all!
Here is a very powerful model
to actually manage time which has been adopted from one of the many works of
Stephen Covey1.And here it goes….
We can divide the time we spend
in 24 hrs into 4 basic categories :
QUADRANT 1
Urgent
Not Important
|
QUADRANT
2
Urgent
Important
|
Not Urgent
Not Important
QUADRANT 4
|
Not Urgent
Important
QUADRANT 3
|
Quadrant
1[Urgent and not important]: An abrupt phone call, a sudden
knock on the door, getting delegated on a work by the boss or wife in the
middle of your work! etc.
1Stephen Covey, A. Roger and Rebecca R. Merrill have written First Things First, which is a self-help book on time management .Quadrant 2[Urgent and important]: A day before exam, preparing a presentation before the boss or some delegation, medical emergencies etc. Examples can be multiplied.
Generally the time we spend in
quadrant 1 and 2 are not in our control as they come under urgent category and we
have no choice but to respond to it. Luckily they don’t occupy the big chunk of
the 24 hrs time we have in a day. The actual difference that we can make in our
lives is how we handle quadrant 3 and 4!
Quadrant
3[ Not Urgent and important]: Spending time on your subject,
your expertise, your skills that will enhance your performance in your career,
communication skills, reading inspiring books and yes transmitting those
inspirations into actions, yoga that will boost your health, service, sadhana etc. Times spent on these
activities are long term investments which truly improve the quality of our
life. They help us realize our long term goals and eventually gives us contentment.
They also reduce the stress from our life as more time we spend on things that
are important to us, lesser will be the situations that are urgent.
Quadrant
4 [Not Urgent and not important]: Facebook, twitter, unending internet chats, mobile chats, video games,
movies, roaming around, oversleeping, excessive talking, reading meaningless
novels etc…examples can’t be multiplied, they are infact exponential!! We have
1000’s of time killers. This is where we can make the actual difference. We
must cut all the time gobblers with utmost vigilance!
Time management then boils down
to shifting the gear from quadrant 4 à quadrant 3. All
we need to do is divert our energy and time into quadrant 3. If we carefully
observe, we actually end up spending big chunk of our time in not urgent, not
important activities. This pattern should be immediately replaced by quadrant
3. How?
No improvement is possible if
the effort or progress in that line is not monitored. Here is a simple tool to
do so. Take a small pocket pad and draw two concentric circles. The inner
circle represents time spent in alignment with your goals. The outer circle represents the time spent contradictory to
the course of achieving your goals. You
have the choice on the nature of you work to star mark every 1 or 2 or 3 hours
as to whether you were spending your time in the inner circle or outer circle
in the previous 1 or 2 or 3 hours.
Quadrant 3 oriented approach.
[Not urgent, important ]
|
Quadrant 4 oriented approach
[Not urgent, Not important ]
|
At the end of the day, you will
see for yourself that how you were wasting time and the next day you will be
more determined to shift the stars from outer circle to inner circle! Isn’t it
simple? Yet it is very a powerful. I am sure that the last 10 minutes that you
spent reading this article deserves a place in your quadrant 3 :-)!!
Wishing you all the best.
Loving Sai Ram!
1 comment:
Sairam,
Love the concentric circles idea to keep track of time - even small chunks of time. Great self-audit tool. Focus and concentration are being sacrificed due to the myriad distractions available (a few of which you listed in your article). Thanks. Will definitely implement the concentric circles idea.
Lalita
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