Everyone has the same amount of time

An ad for a mobile phone company talks about roll over minutes. Minutes you don’t use can be saved and rolled over to be used next month. While that is a great plan for a cell phone, sadly, it doesn’t work with real time.

Time is about the only thing all of us are given the exact same amount of. When the sun rises and we get out of bed, we are allotted the exact same amount of time as everyone else. Mr. President, CEO, little child all have 24 hours in a day. (Ok it is 23 hours 57 Min and 56 seconds thus all the leap seconds and years added to keep things in line. We will round up to 24 to keep things simple.)

Time cannot be saved and used at a later date. That is why it is so important to manage our time wisely. There are a lot of things that vie for our attention. Some things we take the time to do could be considered a waste of time. What we “spend” time on are on things that we value.

I’ll discuss setting priorities and how to get the things done you really want to get done at a later post. Just remember you need to decide what is important, and what you value. Once your values are known, then setting up what needs to be done and how to accomplish it becomes apparent.

Learning how to be productive, efficient, affective, are all ways of managing time. Opportunity costs are another way of looking at how to use the time.

A few years ago I was discussing this with my second oldest son. He had completed high school and was taking some collage classes. He was frustrated with all the demands on his time, and he couldn’t go “hang out” with his old high school friends. We discussed opportunity costs. He wanted good grades, and scholarships. If those were in fact his goals, he couldn’t hang out every day. He could do things after school things, but he had to set his priorities. It was a hard lesson for him to learn and he had to change his approach to doing things. But he was serious, and he made the changes and made better grades in collage than he had in high school. But the opportunity cost of achieving that was missing some nights with his friends.
How we use our time will determine what we are able to accomplish.

So set your goals, determine what is important and lay out a plan to get it done. I’ll be discussing these aspects in future posts. This week remember that time cannot be saved to be used later. We all have the same amount of time. How do you use your time?