FINANCES : The Value of Time

Time management is intricately linked with our financial health because it helps us to accomplish financial duties like record taking or activities that bring in income or help in making an expense economically and save time for other activities. Personal finances has no time for people who have no schedules, who work for today and leave tomorrow for the next day. One of Robin S. Sharma’s Top 200 Secrets of Success and the Pillars of Self-Mastery Is to become a highly disciplined time manager. Sharma says that there are roughly 168 hours in a week we have to be ruthless with your time for our goals by setting aside a few minutes each morning to plan your day. Time is an explosive issue especially in Africa where ‘there is no hurry in Africa’. Everybody wants to minimize work time and maximize leisure time and sleep time in which in some other places in Japan on Germany sounds illogical. Some people view time as that factor which should be maximized to increase productivity while others are in a life time struggle to reduce work hours and have more time to themselves to basically indulge in the pleasures of the world. Both of them have a point, but the important thing there is making sure that if you decide to work for five or eight hours in a day you be as most effective as you can than rather than waste more time ‘at work’ yet when you have effectively doing nothing productive. Sharma says that we should plan around your priorities and focus on not only those tasks which are immediate but not important (i.e., many telephone calls) but especially on those which are important but not urgent, for these allow for the greatest personal and professional development. Important but not immediate activities are those which produce long-term, sustainable benefits and include exercise, strategic planning, the development of relationships and professional education. Gerry Robert’s Multiply Your Business emphasizes the imported of prioritizing and removing minute time wasters that make sure you waste your day doing nothing. Prioritizing our activities so that we can be most effective can seem as hard as making company strategy but as well it can be as simple as drawing a monthly, weekly and daily to do list. A monthly to do list can guide a weekly to do list which can instead help guide a daily to do list. If a monthly to do list is done effectively with proper prioritization, tasks running in of this list into weekly lists will be ticked off as they are accomplished which will immensely improve one’s time management. Remember that time is money and when you waste your time you are wasting your own money, not your employers, your friends or somebody else’s time. The discipline that you acquire in managing your time is just the same that you need to manage and grow your wealth. Next week we look at how best to do our Things To Do lists. kelviod@yahoo.com

Lifestyle

FINANCES : The Value of Time