How to Manage Your Time rather than Cribbing about how less it is!

It is a dichotomy that New Generation Technology has been developed to serve the need of humans but still most of us end our day with so many pending tasks for the next day. Ideally, New Generation Technology should help us manage our work efficiently and leave us with more free time. Yet, when I look around, I realize that everyone has less time in a day, everyone is working more but is still not able to finish the tasks at hand.

I really wonder if this technology is there to help us or is it providing nutrition to our hunger to achieve more, which is depriving us of ever deficient time? Is it possible that our desire to finish more has increased due to upgraded technology? Can’t really answer this question without enough research, however the reality remains the same that almost every person I meet is grappling with the issue of shortage of TIME, always under pressure of leaving tasks unaccomplished.
We need to find the right answers to the biggest problem homo sapiens are facing in today’s era.







Let us mull over some of the possible ways to manage time to lead a fulfilling life:

1. Do Not Miss the Big picture – You need to have non – negotiables in your life which you will not give up in spite of how long the list is of your pending tasks. For example: Find time to exercise daily, put daily effort to upgrade your skill/s that ought to help you do your thing / job/ task at hand, find time to unwind every week by doing simple things such as going for a movie or on a date or a simple meet up with an old friend or meeting your parents etc. DO NOT negotiate with your non- negotiables.

2. Get comfortable with an Uncomfortable Zone – Build a vision to sleep less. I have personally observed and experienced that 5 hours sleep gives me sufficient energy for a long day. Therefore, you need to trust me when I say that 5 to 6 hours sleep is enough for everyone until you are being instructed to sleep more due to medical reasons. You may like to sleep extra on weekends. If you can find even two extra hours in the morning, you will be able to finish lot of pending tasks.

3. Do you have Grit & Determination? - As per the 2018 study by MIT’s Department of Brain & Cognitive Science, habits may form familiar neural pathways which makes it more difficult to break the pattern of behavior. Our brain retains a memory of the habit context, and this habit can be triggered if the habit cues come back. For example, if you want to reduce weight, just the sight of a yummy chocolate can reset all good intentions.

Therefore, you need to have a very strong resolve to change past habits which stop you from achieving your full potential. So, whether you want to wake up early and squeeze in a couple of productive hours, or want to work those extra hours in the evening from 7pm to 10 pm or want to hustle more for passive  income during weekends, you need to have a very strong grit and determination to break patterns and develop new ones. Determination will help you in taking tough decisions to remove unnecessary tasks/habits from your daily routine. It will free your time from the shackles of mundane tasks.

4. To-Do List – Innocuous yet immensely POWERFUL!

a) It sounds simple but I have seen people failing to follow their To-Do list within a week

b) Most of us may not know how to make a To-Do List therefore point a) happens.

Let’s understand the right process of making a To-Do List. You need to make two excel sheets. 1stExcel Sheet would have all the pending tasks as per the priorities assigned to them.

2ndExcel Sheet would have hour-wise/ day wise weekly plan. You need to assign which tasks will go to which day of the week.

Every day, you will work on both sheets and edit the assigned tasks as per the current progress. By working with two sheets, you will be able to control your pending To-Do List. The challenge with one single sheet is that it gets too long, scary and unending and with 2 the moment you complete the tasks of a day / hour simply delete them and start afresh daily with a list which is definitely going to get shorter because you are accomplishing by the hour.

5. Identify your Time Wasters – Lot of us may not realize the reality that we don’t have sufficient time even when we are always conscious about how we spend our time daily. The fact of the matter is our inability to identify time wasters. Time wasters are those activities which do not add any value to one’s current or long-term vision yet we end up doing them anyways.

For example, when you speak to your friends/colleagues during working hours, you may feel you are taking a short break or unwinding yourself during a heavy day. How-ever it breaks your high-level concentration from an important piece of work you might be doing. Same work might take extra time due to lack of concentrated efforts. Lot of organizations collect personal mobiles during working hours from their employees. It might sound weird in Indian context but when you realize the benefit, you would be compelled to give it a serious thought. Even schools are doing it as they want undivided, undistracted attention of their pupils for better learning. Only if one could pick one’s personal calls beyond office hours, it would definitely help in saving up your time and help in finishing more tasks.

6. Power of Consultation – This is actually my all-time favorite. You might often dismiss the power of having a deep professional conversation with your mentor/ friend about the issues you are facing with respect to time. All of us experience limited time and if you don’t find time to discuss how to use it effectively then I’d be curious to know what else could be more important in your life than time itself?

At least once in two months, take out time and discuss about your time management with your Mentor/ Teacher/ Guru. Just having a discussion will help you understand the problem deeply. Obviously when you get an outside-in view of your situation from your mentor, you will be able to find solutions beyond your imagination. You will be able to plan your life better when you realize the power of utilizing effective time.

7. Live 3 Mini Days in a Day  – I recently learnt the power of having 3-mini-days in one single day. After implementing it personally, I have started seeing the benefit of these 3-mini-days concept.

 So let us see how does one divide our day into 3-mini-days:

1stDay – 6 am to 10 am.

2ndDay – 10am to 4 pm.

3rdDay – 4pm to 10 pm.

Segregate your daily tasks into these 3-mini-days and you will be surprised to experience that the number of finished tasks is much more than the tasks finished in one day. You need to try it to believe it.

In the end, my friends, I would like to close by quoting a simple yet meaningful quote by Belle De Jour about time which goes as “Your Time is Limited. Some opportunities Never Repeat Themselves.”

Love & Respect

Nikhil Singh

NDIM

India Centre for Global Excellence

International Skills Centre India

Think HR India

Source - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-manage-your-time-rather-than-cribbing-less-nikhil-singh/

Power of Thoughts

As trainers, coaches, catalysts and change agents, we find ourselves motivating our participants on this powerful quote quite often:

"Sow a thought and you reap an action,

 Sow an action and you reap a habit,

 Sow a habit and you reap a character,

 Sow a character and you reap a destiny."
As we pause, reflect and truly comprehend this causal relationship, the profundity of this quote truly sinks in.

That thought is a powerful seed that germinates into one's attitude, choice of words and action is itself a powerful thought! Let me elaborate…

How many times are we prepared to dig deep in the iceberg beyond the visible tip of an individual's observed behaviour, habits and accompanying results? Amidst the frenetic pace of today's existence, there is an inordinate focus on dissecting one's behaviour - what wrong did he do? what did he say? what is the pattern of results? You get the drift....

As trainers, we strive to accomplish change of behaviour of the participants. We find ourselves investing huge energy in not only training (hopefully, with engaging activities in the classroom or otherwise!) but also motivating them to surpass benchmarks and at times, do what perhaps, nobody has achieved. Motivational speakers seem to flirt with this tip of the iceberg in ample measure and leave their audience spell bound, seemingly ready for some dramatic action. Alas, this excitement is short lived with no tangible action or a behaviour change seeing the light of the day - in the long term. Memories of a 'feel good' experience are carried forward by the participants as a saving grace.

Let us shift our attention to the 90% of the iceberg that is hidden. Therein lies the proverbial mass that comprises thoughts and feelings, beliefs and values and even underlying needs of the individual. How can we understand these? The challenge lies in the complexity of this mass with a multiplier effect due to variations on account of different individuals. One of the ways is to trigger their thought processes by asking questions that encourage learners to dig deep within and look for affinity and congruence to their feelings, set of values they hold dear, their belief system, and the needs they feel will be met.

Therefore, some essential questions to consider can be:

• what would you gain in this learning engagement?
• how will you overcome the odds to keep yourself motivated during the training?
• how would the learning help you back on the job?
• what changes can you visualize for the better?
• how does it relate to what is dear to you?
• how do you see yourself progressing hereafter?
• what will you lose if you were to miss out on this experience? Etc.

 Time and effort need to be invested in these questions by the trainer both at the pre-training stage and prior to the start of actual training session as a minimum. These should be reiterated later during the training sessions and also at the conclusion to trigger the chain of thoughts of the participants. What would appeal to an individual is after all difficult to predict.

My belief is that these questions check on and build the willingness of the learner towards the learning journey that lies ahead. This mental priming is essential and should not be missed or neglected. As the learners find their own answers, clarity of thought emerges clearing the cobwebs in the learners' minds. The learners then, are prepared to acquire new knowledge and skills and are ready to even slog it out. This is evidenced through the change in their body language, vocabulary and of course, 'willing' action - all to the delight of the trainer. The learner is now ready to take the plunge - with both his heart and mind in complete sync - into the realms of learning and emerge strongly influenced and motivated to ‘change’.

We get credible evidence of this in sports and military training. In both, the trainer and the coach highlight the importance of winning the mind game to outwit the opponent or the enemy. The presumption is that winning thoughts clearly precede and determine the action on the ground. At the thinking and willingness level, enough lessons and time is invested so that the learner focuses on the action (to be performed and perfected) with an uncluttered mind. An adversary who hasn't prepared at commensurate levels of priming and preparing the 'thoughts' is clearly at a disadvantage!

Be a willing and ‘thinking’ learner yourself and create tribes of learners who are harnessed on the power of clear thoughts!!

Source - Rajneesh Mathur