Time Management

Day 65 / 365

I’ve got too much going on right now. With 3 freelance projects going on, and the work I have to do to form my own company, I hardly have any time left during the day. Someone asked me recently how I think I will manage all this, and I replied that honestly, I could get things done in half the time if I was more organized and disciplined.

Time management is all about discipline. I realized this quite young. When I was in school, I read about a little experiment in a book. It suggested that when you sit to do some work, keep a stopwatch with you. Every time you do anything else than work, get up to drink water, check your phone or talk to someone, pause the stopwatch. After an hour or two, the time on the stopwatch will tell you the actual time that you have worked.

When I tried this the first time, I got just 30 minutes of actual work time. That was a real eye-opener. But based on that, I was able to come up with a timetable for myself, be more productive, and get a lot more done in a lot less time.

I was a pro at Time Management. Whenever anyone came to me complaining they didn't have enough time, I would take a pen and paper, ask them where they spend their time during the day and I would usually come up with 5–6 hours of free time that they just couldn't account for. That’s the time that gets wasted because we are not concentrating on doing anything.

I find that I have grown complacent now since I can’t manage my time as I used to before. But I think it's a challenge that I am willing to take up again.