Time Management - What it is and Why It's Important

So let's talk about time management, how to dolives. When we focus on just those few things
it, and why it's important. First of all, I want tothat are important, and we figure out how to get
share a quote with you that I got from Stephenourselves to behave to focus on those things,
Covey, the author of The Seven Habits of Highlythat's when life really turns around. Interestingly
Effective People. Stephen is a genius, and he says,enough, I've discovered that time management
"Time management is a misnomer. The challengereally comes down to setting conditions in your
is to manage ourselves." See, you can't actuallylife that make it so that you can't do anything but
manage time. It runs at the same speedfocus on the important things. It's not about
whatever you decide to do, so you can't reallymaking a list of things to do and then doing the
manage time. But what you can do is learn toright things, although that can be important
manage yourself. The big challenge in this day andsometimes. It's about setting up your life and
age is to manage ourselves. We are dealing withyour environment so that you automatically do
all kinds of challenges that we never had to dealthe things that are important, and you don't have
with before. Al Reese and Jack Trout who wrotethe option to do other things.
the book positioning, they said in that book thatExamples include when you first get to work in
we live in the world's first over-communicatedthe morning, don't check your voicemail and your
society, meaning that there's too muche-mail. Work for a couple of hours on your most
information and communication coming in. Nowimportant project, and work on something that
they wrote that book back in 1980.has a high lifetime value. Something that is going
Think about that for a moment. They said thatto make a lot of value, create a lot of money
we're in the world's first over-communicatednow and in the future. What do most people do?
society before the internet and before everyoneThey come in, they check their e-mail, voicemail,
had cell phones and before everyone was dealingand they see what everyone else has on the
with instant messenger and all of these directagenda for them. Another thing to do is to set
access 24/7 ways to get in touch with everyone,aside entire days. Entire days of time where
anytime, everywhere. So if we were the world'syou're only focused on the things that create the
first over-communicated society then, what aremost value and bring in the most money so that
we now and what does that mean? Well, whereyou're not checking your e-mail. You're not
we are now is we are completely drowning inchecking your voicemail. You're not doing any of
communication. We're drowning in information.that stuff. You might check your e-mail and your
We're drowning in distraction and interruption.voicemail once or twice during that day, but only
We're overloaded by all the things that arefor a little period of time.
happening.The rest of the time, you're just solely focused
And in order to confront this, we have to realizeon getting something done. Another thing that we
that we can't do everything, we can't look atneed to train ourselves to do is invest time in
everything, and we can't see everything. We can'tfocused, uninterrupted blocks. Now this is an idea
take advantage of every opportunity. We havethat all the great time management gurus teach.
to become very selective. When we talk aboutAll the way from Peter Drucker back in The
time management and productivity, what we'reEffective Executive. The modern experts like Dan
really talking about, again, is self-management andSullivan, Jim Lare, and Tony Schwartz who wrote
getting ourselves to do the things that are theThe Power of Full Engagement. It's very
important things. What you'll find in life is that ifimportant to just focus on one thing for an
you just focus on a few key, important thingsextended period of time. Cultivate the ability to
and do them over and over and over, the restfocus your mind. And when you're focused on
will take care of itself. If you eat simple meals ofone thing for an extended period of time and you
healthy food and do a little bit of exerciseblock out all the distractions and interruptions, and
everyday, health just takes care of itself.I mean turn off the phone, turn off the
If you invest quality time, one on one, in an opencomputer, turn off everything else, you don't
dialogue on a regular basis with people that arehave anything to do but that one thing.
important to you, the relationship will take care ofSo time management, what it is, it's about
itself. That's the way things work. But we don'tmanaging yourself. Not about managing your time.
do these things. What we do instead is we eat aIt's about learning how to develop healthy habits
bunch of snacks and junk food and forget toand rituals so that you do the right things
exercise, or we say I'll do that later, or we buyeveryday. And counter intuitively, it's about setting
the food that has the thing that says low fat onup the conditions in your life physically, emotionally,
it, and you think, "Oh, that means that I won'tand logically so that you're forced to do the right
have to do any exercise." Or we make a quickthing, and you don't have any other options. So
call, and we say, "Hey, how are you doing? I loveget to work right now doing the right things
you," and we think that that's quality time. Orevery day and blocking out, creating an
even worse, time that we're spending with peopleenvironment that blocks out any distractions and
that are important to us. We're checking ourany interruptions so you just stay focused. If you
phones and our Blackberries, and we're lookingjust do that one thing, create an environment
online and text messaging. We're really not havingthat blocks out distraction and interruption and
that deep, quality connection.keeps you focused on those few important
That is what destroys health and relationships.things, you'll watch your productivity start to
Well, same thing destroys productivity. Itskyrocket immediately.
destroys getting results in business and in our