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What is a "Time Management System" ?

"Time" I know what it is until you ask me to define it. "A little gap between two eternities."

There are 1440 minutes or 86,400 seconds in a day. We need to use each for the Glory of God.

"Management" = control for a purpose

"System" = a blend of methods and equipment.

Progress is achieved by linear not circular action. We need to use our time to our best good and God’s glory.

"Tis only one life twill soon be past, only what is done for Christ will last."

Carl Henry in Dictionary of Theology says the Bible "Instead of viewing time abstractly as a problem, it regards time as a created sphere in which God’s redemptive plan is actualized." "History has a beginning in God, it has its center in Christ and its end in the final consummation and the Last Judgment."

Augustine said—"I know what time is until you ask me."

"Eternity is infinity in relation to time." Strong

"Time is duration measured by successions." Strong

"Dante speaks of God as him in whom ‘every where and every when are focused in a point,’ that is, to whom ever season is now and every place here." Strong

"…Time ands space are fragments of the Infinite for the use of finite creatures, God permits them that he may not be alone. They are the mode under which creatures are possible and conceivable." Strong

Time is the opportunity that He gives us to experience and know Him.

1 Kings 6:1 "1 And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month Zif, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the LORD."

The temple was begun in the 4^th year, 2 month (Zif) of Solomon’s reign.

480 year from Egypt to building of Temple or 476 years to the beginning of Solomon’s reign.

Paul in his sermon on recorded in Ac 13 gives a chronology of Israel

Acts 13:17-22 "16 Then Paul stood up, and beckoning with his hand said, Men of Israel, and ye that fear God, give audience. 17 The God of this people of Israel chose our fathers, and exalted the people when they dwelt as strangers in the land of Egypt, and with an high arm brought he them out of it. 18 And about the time of forty years suffered he their manners in the wilderness. 19 And when he had destroyed seven nations in the land of Chanaan, he divided their land to them by lot. 20 And after that he gave unto them judges about the space of four hundred and fifty years, until Samuel the prophet. 21 And afterward they desired a king: and God gave unto them Saul the son of Cis, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, by the space of forty years. 22 And when he had removed him, he raised up unto them David to be their king; to whom also he gave testimony, and said, I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart, which shall fulfil all my will. "

Paul states 530 years and omits 64 years

The wilderness period 40

The seven year’s war 7

Division of the land to1st servitude 13

Period of Judges 450

Kingship of Saul 40

Kingship of David 40

Solomon, to his 4^th year 4

530 64

Total 594

Does the Bible contradict itself? Is the Bible always reliable? Are the original manuscripts accurate? Are there any exceptions to our trusting the Word of God?

Reasons for this kind of study.

1. To be faithful to the whole Word of God. To limit ourselves to choice portions of Scriptures and pet doctrines is to cripple our understanding of God and to limit the Word’s effect upon us. Subtle details in the Word of God sometimes reveal sublime truths about God.

2. To refute any Bible critics. 1 Peter 3:15 "But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:"

3. To show that all Scripture has practical value. 1 Tim 3:16 "And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory." Study and spirituality are not contradictory but complimentary.

The answer to our apparent problem is hinted at in Hosea1:9 where God is naming Hosea’s child. "Call his name Lo-ammi; for ye are not My People, and I will not be your God." LoAmmi means not my people.

"When Israel was regarded by Jehovah as ‘Lo Ammi,’ i.e. Not My People (Hos 9; 2;1) then, Jehovah delt with them on a different principle in recording time. During these periods their national history years are omitted from the years of the world’s time. When they were Lo Ammi, the events recorded in Scriptures, were recorded according to a reckoning we have termed Anno Dei (in God’s year) and not according to Anno numdi (in the year of the world) reckoning…" (Companion Bible, Appendix p 56)

Between the entry into the land of Cannan and the end of Samuel’s judgeship, the beginning of the kingdom there were 7 Lo Ammi periods during which God delivered his people into the hands of their enemies.

These seven period are recorded in Judges

3:8-8 8 years servitude to Mesopotania

3:14 18 years servitude to Moab

4:3 20 years servitude to Cannan

6:1 7 years servitude to Midian

9:22 3 years servitude to Abimelech

10:8 18 years servitude to Ammon

13:1 40 years servitude to Philistines

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Chronology of the Old Testament by Martin Anstey--

Anno Dei = God’s Year = A.D. as opposed to B.C.

Anno Mundi = World’s Year

Doctrine:

When God providentially allows His people not to serve Him but to serve themselves or sin. He does not recognize the "time" spent out of His Will, in disobedience. He does not register it on His calendar. May we be spiritual Isra-El "governed by God."

All history is hinged upon our Lord’s presence. His first coming divide time and His second coming again divide time and ultimately end time.

Re 10:6 "And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer:"

Man’s future history is hinged upon His presence (parousia) in His second coming.

The first presence of Christ divides time.

The second presence of Christ ends time.

1 ¶ A Prayer of Moses the man of God. Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.

2 Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.

3 Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men.

4 For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.

5 Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up.

6 In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.

7 ¶ For we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled.

8 Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.

9 For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told.

10 The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

11 Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath.

12 ¶ So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

13 Return, O LORD, how long? and let it repent thee concerning thy servants.

14 O satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.

15 Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil.

16 Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children.

17 And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.

manah maw-naw'

"number our days" to count, reckon, number, assign, tell, appoint, prepare (Qal) to count, number, reckon, assign, appoint AV - number 14, prepare 5, appointed 4, tell 3, count 1, set 1; 28

Not merely to count them, how many they are, in an arithmetical way;…..but rather the meaning of the petition is, that God would teach us to number our days, as if the present one was the last. For we cannot boast of tomorrow; we know not but this day, or night, our souls may be required of us. The sense is, that God would teach us seriously to meditate on, and consider of, the shortness of our days; that they are but as a shadow, and there is no abiding; and the vanity and sinfulness of them, that so we may not desire to live here always.

1. Because a happy or miserable eternity depends on the good or ill improvement of time.

Heb 9:27 "And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:"

2. Because time is very short.

The scarcity of any commodity occasions men to set a higher value upon it especially if it is necessary. It is the law of supply and demand.

2 Kings 6:25 "And there was a great famine in Samaria: and, behold, they besieged it, until an ass's head was sold for fourscore pieces of silver, and the fourth part of a cab of dove's dung for five pieces of silver."

Job 9:25,26 "Now my days are swifter than a post: they flee away, they see no good. They are passed away as the swift ships: as the eagle that hasteth to the prey"

3. Time ought to be esteemed by us very precious because we are uncertain of its continuance. We do not know how short it is. The longer we live the sooner we shall die.

James 4:14 "Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away."

4. Time is very precious because when it is past, it cannot be recovered. We might regain possessions in this world after they are lost but not so with time. One may recover from total bankruptcy but not from time-ruptcy

Job 16:22 "When a few years are come, then I shall go the way whence I shall not return."

What have you done with past time? It might be sobering to list the amount of time we have spent on various pursuits this year. Compare reading the Word with reading the newspaper. Compare talks with a close friend with talks with God. What would be the loss for the kingdom of God if we had done like "RipVan-winkel" and slept all the past year?

There are 8,736 hours in a year. If we subtract 1/3 for sleeping there remains 5,824 conscious hours. 10% of our conscious hours would be 582 hours, a tithe of our awake time. 582 divide by52 is 11hours per week that we could God as a tithe of our time. If we spend four hours in formal church worship that would leave 1 hour per day including Sunday for personal and secret relationship with God.

If men were a lavish with their money as they are with their time; if it were as common a thing for them to throw—away their money, as it is for them to throwaway their time, we would think them beside themselves, and not in possession of their right minds. Yet time is a thousand times more precious than money.

"Spend your time in nothing which you know must be repented of; in nothing on which you might not pray for the blessing of God, in nothing which you could not review with a quiet conscience on your dying bed. In nothing which you might not safely and properly be found doing if death should surprise you in the act." Baxter

You can not kill time without injuring eternity.

An inscription on a sun-dial said of the "hours"—"Percunt et imputantur" "They pass by, and they are charged to our account."

I have just a little minute,

Only sixty seconds in it,

Forced upon me, cannot refuse it.

Did not seek it, did not choose it,

But it is up to me to use it.

I must suffer if I abuse it;

Just a tiny, little minute,

But eternity is in it.

How many years of our lives are recognized by God, (Anno Dei) ? How many days and minutes are accepted by God.?

When as a Child I laughed and wept — Time Crept.

When as a youth I dreamed and talked — Time Walked.

When I became a fully grown man — Time Ran.

When older still I daily grew — Time Flew.

Soon I’ll find in journeying on — Time gone.

My whole desire deeply turns away

Out of all time unto eternal Day,

I give myself, and all I call my own

To Christ for ever, to be His alone.

1. We are accountable to God for time given us. Time is a talent given us by God. He has set us our day and it is not for nothing. Our day was appointed for some particular and personal work for us to do. God will at the end the day call us to account.

2. Consider how much time we have lost. We cannot make up for a lost minute. But we can make better use of our time left.

3. Consider how time is sometimes valued by those who have come near to the end of it.

4. "Take time to be holy" as the song says because we are sure to be Holy God Jehovah.

5. Consider what a value is set upon time by those who pass the end of it.

1. Improve present time. Without delay. Get a "Believer’s Life System"

2. Improve the most precious part of time. Some parts of time are more precious that others. Time of worship and prayer are more precious than play or work or travel. Ecc 3:1 "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:"

Eph 5:14-16 "Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, Redeeming the time, because the days are evil."

The word circumspectly is used to refer to a mountain climbers climbing the dangerous slopes it means careful, exact, and strict action. One careless step can be disaster.

"Redeeming" means to purchase out, or buy up. We are to by the time so we will have for our use for the kingdom of God. We buy with our energy, our planning, organization, discrimination about what to do. No generation has had more opportunities presented to them.

Luke 16:2-4 "And he called him, and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of thee? give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward. Then the steward said within himself, What shall I do? for my lord taketh away from me the stewardship: I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed. I am resolved what to do, that, when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses.

Definition of a stewardship.

Most of us are trying to figure out what happened, what’s going on now, and what to do next.

When you are putting out fires all day you day goes up in smoke and you are an arsonist by default.

How to Achieve More with Your Time

We buy accomplishment with time.

Time is really our only commodity.

Time is the raw material of everything else.

Picture a ship passing over a large body of water.

We are the passengers.

The captain is the eternal Logos, Jesus Christ

The Water is time.

The ship is the conditions, circumstances and means of God’s providence to convey us through time.

We view the water "time" only in segments as we pass through it. Past or future time seems non-existent. But to God who is above all viewing all past present future are all the same. He sees the whole of time as one. May we not get so involved with the on-board activities that we loose perspective of the whole. May the "Holy Spirit" the first mate govern our activities and attitudes.

By using Time Management skills you can learn to: Determine which of the things you do are important, and which can be dropped

Use your time in the most effective way possible Increase the time in which you can work Control the distractions that waste your time and break your flow Increase your effectiveness and reduce stress. By becoming more effective in your use of working time, you can reduce stress by: being more in control of what you do being productive, and secure in your job because of this enjoying what you do giving yourself more quality time to relax and enjoy life outside work. At the heart of the subject is a simple, but obvious, shift in focus.

Despite the benefits of time management, very many people do not use it. This can be because:

they don't know about it

they are too lazy to plan

they enjoy the adrenaline buzz of meeting tight deadlines

they enjoy crisis management

The problem with crisis management and tight deadlines is that while they can be fun, often they can lead to high levels of stress, a disrupted private life, tiredness and, occasionally, to failure of projects.

Phrases that indicate poor "time management":

"I forgot that."

"I didn’t know that."

"Where did that come from."

"I don’t remember where I put it."

"You don’t know how busy we are."

"I wrote it down somewhere."

 

 

 

Part Two:

Time Management

and

The Believer’s Life System

 

The mechanics:

The Principle.

If it is written down it has a greater likelihood of being accomplished. Writing down commitments is somewhat like a promise to yourself or someone else.

Write it in one place.

In the Believer’s Life System. All one’s critical information can be written in a designated place in the BLS. It can be entered in the: "calendar section" (when it happened or when it is planned to happen) or in one the "topical sections".

Keep the place with you.

In hand or close by. Keeping the BLS with you does two things:

It allows you to always have it convenient to enter the data easily.

It keeps all the important & critical information close and ready for use.

"Putting God at the center of all you do." This is unique with the BLS. No other time management system does this. This is done by daily Scripture quotes, devotional inserts, spiritually orientated forms, Scripture text (NAS & NLT),

Biblical based financial plans. BLS is not just to set appointments, but to set goals and follow principles. Not just to help you organize, but to prioritize--"That in all things he might have the preeminence." Col 1:18 The Believer's Life System helps you see those activities the way He does, as precious opportunities to draw closer to Him.

There are five key inserts:

1 page/month or 2 pages/month or

2 pages/week

1 page/day or 2 pages/day

All the other inserts build around these. The user needs either 1 page/month or 2 pages/month or 2 pages/week. If more space is needed for daily notes the user will add either 1page/day or 2 pages/day.

5. The Interface.

There are two kinds of material used in the BLS:

Current: The material that you carry with you daily.

Stored: The material that is stored in the storage binder.

That which has been used, such as past calendar notes, devotional material, project notes.

That which is to be used such as forms, future devotionals, Biblical text.

The user is guaranteed one full year of dated material from the time of purchase.

The binder is guaranteed for life.

 

Application of the Mechanics:

We can not manage past time but we can manage the data about that time.

Record keeping.

Write everything down.

Write it down in one place.

Keep the place with you.

Cross referencing.

In computing we past short cuts.

This saves duplication which saves time and space. For example do not rewrite a persons business and personal data. Make a basic sheet or file and reference to that from where ever you are.

Standardizing forms and sizes of paper.

Those little bitzy pieces of paper get lost and require the information to be rewritten.

Standardize directories.

Creating forms or templates in the computer.

People spend their days in a frenzy of activity, but achieve very little because they are not concentrating on the right things. We must discriminate and prioritize.

This is neatly summed up in the Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 rule. This states that typically 80% of unfocussed effort generates only 20% of results, and that the remaining 80% of results are achieved with only 20% of the effort. By applying time management, including planning, we aim to change this to ensure that we concentrate as much of our effort as possible on the high payoff tasks. This ensures that we achieve the greatest payoff possible with our investment of time.

You may have heard of one approach to the Pareto principle: that 80% of a job is completed in 20% of the time.

Another application in an non-planning environment is that 80% of the effort tends to achieve 20% of the results.

By thinking and planning we can reverse this to 20% of the effort achieving 80% of the results. We may even decide that it is more efficient not to attempt the remaining work at all!

An important part of focusing on results is working out what to focus on! Many people work very hard all day doing little jobs that do not actually affect the quality of the work they do.

What would you like to spend your time on? It is important for your own quality of life that you enjoy your job. If you know broadly what you like and dislike, you will be more able to move your job towards doing things that you enjoy. This is important as you are much more likely to do a job efficiently and effectively if you enjoy it than if you loathe it.

What do you do well?

It is important to know what your talents and weaknesses are. A good way of doing this is to carry out a SWOT analysis. This provides a formal approach to evaluating your strengths and weaknesses, and the opportunities and threats that you face.

Job Clarification

One excellent way of ensuring that you concentrate on the right things is to agree them with your boss!

SWOT Analysis –

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats

A more systematic method is to use SWOT Analysis to detail and examine your organization's Strengths and Weaknesses, and to examine the Opportunities and Threats it faces. Often carrying out an analysis using the SWOT framework will be enough to reveal the changes which can be usefully made.

To carry out a SWOT Analysis for yourself or your organization, write down answers to the following questions:

Carrying out this analysis is will often be illuminating - both in terms of pointing out what needs to be done, and in pointing out that problems may be smaller than initially anticipated.

If you are having difficulty in deciding the aim of your plan, ask yourself:

What do I want the future to be?

What benefit do I want to give to my customers?

What returns do I seek?

What standards am I aiming for?

What values do I and my organization believe in?

By answering these questions you should be able to crystallize an aim. Asking yourself ethical questions further helps by establishing a framework within which you can respond to sudden opportunities without damaging integrity.

If you are working with other people who will be involved with the plan, this may be the time to ask their opinions. If they have influence on the direction of the plan at this stage, then they are more likely to feel committed to it and support it.

How do you spend your day now?

Memory is a very poor guide when it comes to assessing how you spend your time - it is too easy to forget time spent talking to colleagues, making coffee, eating lunch, etc. It can also function poorly when you are at a low ebb during the day.

A revealing technique is to keep an Activity Log for several days. Without modifying your behavior note down the things you do as you do them, from the moment you start working. Every time you change activities, whether opening mail, working, making coffee, dealing with colleagues, gossiping, going to collect paper from a printer, etc. note down the time of the change.

As well as noting activities, it is worth noting how you feel, whether alert, flat, tired, energetic, etc. This should be done periodically throughout the day.

Once you have logged your time for several days analyze the log. You may be alarmed to see the length of time you spend opening mail, talking to colleagues, dealing with disruptions, or doing low value jobs!

You may also see that you are energetic in some parts of the day, and flat in other parts. A lot of this can depend on the rest breaks you take, the times and amounts you eat, and quality of your nutrition. The activity log gives you some basis for experimenting with these variables.

How planning helps you to use your time effectively

The next stage in concentrating on results is to learn how to plan. Planning can be considered to be an investment in efficiency and success. Planning is the process by which you work out what you want to achieve, and then think through the who, what, when, where, why and how of achieving that goal in the most effective way possible.

By planning well you can ensure that you concentrate only on those tasks that will move you towards your goal in the most effective way possible, without being distracted by unimportant but urgent tasks.

Planning breaks down into two main strands: personal planning, which is best done by setting goals, and project planning, which is best achieved by a formalized application of the planning process.

Deciding what to concentrate on Goal setting

Planning for effective time management Informal Planning

Meetings can be effective ways of sharing information or reaching a decision. They can, however, be ineffectively run in a way that swallows up your time without giving a sufficient benefit.

Just as jobs that you do have a cost, the meetings that you attend have a cost, not only of your time but also that of the other attendees. You should ask yourself whether the benefit of the meeting has been worth the time invested in both the meeting and the preparation for it. Was your contribution worth your investment?

This section explains how to run a meeting in the most effective way possible, and then how to get the most out of meetings that you attend.

Running Meetings

This section gives a series of recommendations that should help you to run effective meetings:

Regular meetings are often little more than a security blanket, where the conveyor feels vaguely that 'it is a good thing to communicate' with only vague ideas what to communicate about. Time is routinely made available for discussion, so discussion will expand to fill it whether this is cost-effective or not.

In many cases it is much more effective to agree to hold meetings only when specific trigger events show them to be necessary. As an example, a manager may propose a meeting when he or she projects that resource difficulties may be encountered, and needs a decision on how to handle this.

By scheduling meetings to occur on trigger events, you can ensures that time is invested in the solution of a problem only when it is needed.

The agenda of the meeting shows the aim of the meeting, and points of discussion in priority order B effectively it is a To Do List for the meeting.

Using an agenda helps to focus the meeting, stopping it drifting off-topic. If you circulate it sufficiently far in advance, it allows people to prepare fully for the meeting so the meeting does not stall for lack of information.

Where many people are to attend the meeting, it may be beneficial for a small expert subcommittee to meet to prepare the agenda.

You can usefully change the timing of the meeting depending on the habits of the attendees:

Where people tend to waffle excessively, you can schedule the meeting just before lunch or going home.

This gives people an incentive to be brief

Alternatively where other people are time conscious, writing the cost per minute of the meeting on a flip chart can have a focusing effect.

Where people tend to turn up late, start a meeting at an unusual time, e.g. 19 minutes past the hour. This seems to improve punctuality.

If possible, ensure that the meeting starts on time - where it starts late, time of all the attendees is being wasted waiting for the start. If late-comers are not critically needed, start without them.

These points can also improve the effectiveness of a meeting:

You should only bring the minimum number of attendees to a meeting - the more people are present, the more will want to air their views. Similarly, bringing people who are not needed to a meeting wastes their time.

Ensure that decisions taken at previous meetings have been acted on. This ensures that the meeting will not just be seen as a 'talking-shop'.

At the end of the meeting, summarize the points discussed, and make an action plan out of the decisions taken. This ensures that everyone understands what has been decided, and who will do what.

Attending Meetings

on time, and present only if needed

well prepared and briefed on you’re contribution

attentive to the discussion so that your contribution does not repeat someone else's

involved in the discussion

and brief, relevant, focussed and courteous in your interventions

Meetings can be effective ways of reaching decisions, however they can also be huge wastes of time. When you invest time in a meeting, you should expect a sufficiently large pay-back to justify that investment.

If you are running a meeting, use an agenda to focus discussion. Use the time set for the meeting as a tool for getting around bad habits of attendees if necessary. Summarizing the meeting with an action plan ensures that everyone knows what has been decided.

If you are attending a meeting, ensure that you respect the time of other attendees by being well prepared, attentive and concise.

If you need to travel to meet people often, or need to liaise with people who have a highly structured day, you may find that you spend a certain amount of time waiting. This is time that is often wasted. Similarly if you have to be present for an appointment at a specific time, you may have to leave a large amount of contingency time. If your journey goes well you may have to spend a lot of time waiting at the other end.

Unfortunately some idiots may also play power games with you by keeping you waiting to try to gain advantage.

Good use of waiting time can help to reduce the advantage.

The following points can help you to use waiting time effectively:

Confirm the appointment the day before. This reminds people that you will be coming where you have arranged it many days in advance. Try not to arrive at the site of the meeting more than 5 minutes early. Doing so gives the impression that you have time to waste. Try to leave arrival times approximate. This gives some margin of error should you be held up, and means that you can set out for the meeting later. While you are waiting keep busy - not only do you get more work done, it also looks better.

If people keep you waiting more than 15 minutes they may be playing power games. If you can afford to leave after 15 minutes, tell your contact's PA that you are about to leave. This gives the contact a chance to come out to meet you or explain the delay. If he doesn't, leave. If you can't afford to leave after 15 minutes, then keep working!

It is easy to ignore time spent travelling in your assessment of time management. It is worth considering whether this is time that you could use usefully.

If you commute by train or plane, are you using that commuting time to good effect? You may find that if you upgrade your ticket you get a more effective working environment. The extra work that you achieve may be worth the extra cost. Similarly if you drive you may find that it is cost-effective to employ a driver if you can work from the back of a car.

The value of this does, of course, depend on you using this time saved effectively!

You may also consider the condition in which you arrive to be important - if you need to be in good condition when you arrive, then you should travel in a sufficiently comfortable way.

Most often when people delay things they are procrastinating - putting them off until they are unavoidable.

Procrastination slows achievement of current goals, and restricts future opportunity as time is clogged up. The time spent before the job is properly tackled is usually wasted.

Procrastination can come about in a number of ways:

Here the planning process is drawn out to avoid confronting an issue. Plans are argued and polished and perfected, but implementation of the plans is delayed unnecessarily.

Perfectionism:

Often tasks are fussed over long after they have been achieved to a quite sufficient level. This often serves to delay tackling other problems. Often perfection simply is not required, and is not cost-effective to achieve.

Boring jobs are very easy to delay for spurious reasons. Here self-discipline is needed.

Where you are hostile to the task, or to the person giving the task, there is a strong temptation to delay.

'The Deadline High':

Coming up against a tight deadline and meeting it is immensely satisfying. It can be associated with strong rushes of adrenaline. The problems with this are that you may find that jobs are being delayed precisely to get this rush of adrenaline, and that occasionally jobs may fail because they have been left too

late.

The way to tackle procrastination is to set deadlines by which goals should be achieved. The way to avoid Deadline High procrastination is to set intermediary goals which must be achieved.

Occasionally delay can be positive and useful:

When you are tired, upset or angry it can often be best not to tackle jobs that require sensitivity and clarity of thought.

When you do not have the information or skills to do a job properly, it may be best to delay until you have

acquired them.

When there is something more important to do than the job being delayed.

Delay can also be useful in a situation where you feel threatened or are unhappy about any course of action needed to meet a crisis. By delaying in these cases you give time for more information to come to light to guide the choice, may see a different perspective that changes your view of the circumstances. Alternatively random occurrences may give you a useful advantage, or may reduce the severity of a problem.

These positive aspects of delay must not, however, be used as an excuse to avoid action that is obviously essential.

Delegation involves passing responsibility for completion of work to other people. This section examines the reasons you should delegate, how to delegate, failure to delegate and what should not be delegated.

Delegation is useful for the following reasons:

Once people have learned how to work with you, they can take responsibility for jobs you do not have time

to do.

You can develop people to look after routine tasks that are not cost-effective for you to carry out It transfers work to people whose skills in a particular area are better than yours, saving time. Transfer of responsibility develops your staff, and can increase their enjoyment of their jobs

The ideal position to reach as a manager is one where your staff carry out all the routine activities of your team. This leaves you time to plan, think, and improve the efficiency of what you are doing.

The following points may help you in delegating jobs:

Deciding what to delegate:

One way of deciding what to delegate is simply to list the things that you do which could be more effectively done by someone either more skilled in a particular area, or less expensive. Alternatively you may decide to use your activity log as the basis of your decision to delegate: this will show you where you are spending large amounts of time on low yield jobs.

Select capable, willing people to carry out jobs:

How far you can delegate jobs will depend on the ability, experience and reliability of your assistants.

Good people will be able to carry out large jobs with no intervention from you. Inexperienced or unreliable people will need close supervision to get a job done to the correct standard. However if you coach, encourage and give practice to them you may improve their ability to carry out larger and larger tasks

unsupervised.

Delegate complete jobs:

It is much more satisfying to work on a single task than on many fragments of the task. If you delegate a complete task to a capable assistant, you are also more likely to receive a more elegant, tightly integrated solution.

Explain why the job is done, and what results are expected:

When you delegate a job, explain how it fits into the overall picture of what you are trying to achieve.

Ensure that you communicate effectively:

the results that are needed

the importance of the job

the constraints within which it should be carried out

the deadlines for completion

internal reporting dates when you want information on the progress of the project

Once you have decided to delegate a task, let your assistant get on with it. Review the project on the agreed reporting dates, but do not constantly look over their shoulders. Recognize that your assistants

may know a better way of doing something than you do. Accept that there may be different ways of achieving a particular task, and also that one of the best ways of really learning something is through making mistakes. Always accept mistakes that are not caused by idleness, and that are learned from.

It is important to support your subordinates when they are having difficulties, but do not do the job for them. If you do, then they will not develop the confidence to do the job themselves.

You have delegated a task to take a work load off you. If you accept only partially completed jobs back,

then you will have to invest time in completing them, and your assistant will not get the experience he or she needs in completing projects.

Give credit when a job has been successfully completed:

Public recognition both reinforces the enjoyment of success with the assistant who carried out the task and sets a standard for other employees.

Despite the many advantages of delegation, some managers do not delegate.

This can be for the following reasons:

Delegating jobs does take time. In the early stages of taking over a job you may need to invest time in training people to take over tasks. Jobs may take longer to achieve with delegation than they do for you to do by yourself, when coaching and checking are taken into account. In time, with the right people, you will find that the time taken up reduces significantly as your coaching investment pays back.

Just as you have to develop staff to do jobs quickly without your involvement, you will have to let people make mistakes, and help them to correct them. Most people will, with time, learn to do jobs properly.

By doing jobs yourself you will probably get them done effectively. If, however, your assistants are standing idle while you do this, then your department will be seriously inefficient. Bear in mind the cost of your time and the cost of your department's time when you are tempted to do a job yourself.

Whenever you delegate, you surrender some element of authority (but not of responsibility!) This is inevitable. By effective delegation, however, you get the benefits of adequate time to do YOUR job really

well.

Where your department is running smoothly with all routine work effectively delegated, it may appear that you have nothing to do. Now you have the time to think and plan and improve operations (and plan your next career step!)

Belief that staff 'are not up to the job':

Good people will often under-perform if they are bored. Delegation will often bring the best out of them.

People who are not so good will not be effective unless you invest time in them. Even incompetent people can be effective, providing they find their level. The only people who cannot be reliably delegated to are those whose opinions of their own abilities are so inflated that they will not co-operate.

It is common for people who are newly promoted to managerial positions to have difficulty delegating. Often they will have been promoted because they were good at what they were doing. This brings the temptation to continue trying to do their previous job, rather than developing their new subordinates to do the job well.

While you should delegate as many tasks as possible that are not cost effective for you to carry out, ensure that

you do not delegate the control of your team. Remember that you bear ultimate responsibility for the success or

failure of what you are trying to achieve.

Effective delegation involves achieving the correct balance between effective control of work and letting people

get on with jobs in their own way.

This is an extremely simple way of creating more time, but is intensely effective. If you get up one hour early for a year, you have effectively created around 10 additional working weeks!

An important thing to realize is that when you are at work as an employee, however much you are paid, your work enriches someone else. Even if your work creates huge profits you will only see a small proportion of this coming back as pay rises.

When you work at home on your own projects then this work directly enriches you. You gain all the profits your

work creates. Most people fail to even attempt to enrich themselves in this most effective way.

The trick behind this is to get into the routine of getting up at a specific time: the first time you haul yourself out of bed before dawn will be painful, but every following time will be easier. Eventually you may reach a stage where you are awake and ready to move just as your alarm clock goes off.

You may find that you are tired for a few weeks, but in time your body will adjust. If necessary go to bed a little earlier.

You may find that you spend a lot of time doing jobs that are not core to what you are trying to achieve.

Remember that most people do not like doing tedious or difficult jobs - if they can shift them onto you, they will. If you are receptive or overly co-operative then you may find that your time fills with irrelevant tasks. You may find that you are extremely busy, but consistently fail to do your own job.

The way to get out of this situation is to say 'No' in a polite but firm way. Whether you can do this obviously depends on your relationship with the person who is asking you to do the job.

Where your boss is asking you to do a job that interferes with your work, then a useful trick is to ask him or her to prioritize the job in relation to existing work. Where this interferes with the achievement of other deadlines, this should be recognized.

Where it is important that you should not be interrupted, it may be effective to offer to advise someone else on how to carry out the work, collaborate with someone else, or delegate the job to an assistant.

Another area to be aware of is where assistants may return unfinished work to you. This leaves you having to complete the job. Where possible assistants should be encouraged to return to you with completed jobs only, or

should complete the tasks themselves once you have given them the necessary of information.

The BLS can keep your desk clean all day long.

The best way to clean some peoples’ desk is with a shovel or back hoe.

Instead of keeping notes of all sizes, from 1@ square stickum notes to 3@ thick files, on your desk so you will not forget to do the work let the files stay in the cabinet and note all the tasks in BLS.

Praise the Lord for those stickum notes.

The Amobile to do@ list

The stickum notes can be used in the calendar pages. If it doesn=t get done on the first day=s attempt just move the note to the next day.

Goal setting is a formal process of setting personal targets in a number of areas. The process of setting goals on a routine basis helps you to decide what you want to achieve with your time, and then set the precise personal targets that will lead you to achieving this.

Setting goals has the additional benefit of raising your self-confidence by forcing you to recognise your ability and competence in achieving the goals that you have set on an ongoing basis.

Goal setting is a very powerful technique that can yield strong returns in all areas of your life.

At its simplest level the process of setting goals and targets allows you to choose where you want to go in life. By knowing precisely what you want to achieve, you know what you have to concentrate on and improve, and what is merely a distraction. Goal setting gives you long-term vision and short-term motivation. It focuses your acquisition of knowledge and helps you to organize your resources.

By setting sharp, clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals. You can see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind.

By setting goals you can:

Achieve more

Improve performance

Increase your motivation to achieve

Increase your pride and satisfaction in your achievements

Improve your self-confidence

Plan to eliminate attitudes that hold you back and cause unhappiness

<> suffer less from stress and anxiety

<> concentrate better

<> show more self-confidence

<> perform better

<> are happier and more satisfied.

Goal Setting Helps self-confidence

By setting goals, and measuring their achievement, you are able to see what you have done and what you are capable of. The process of achieving goals and seeing their achievement gives you the confidence and self-belief that you need that you will be able to achieve higher and more difficult goals.

Providing that you have the self-discipline to carry it through, goal setting is also relatively easy. The following section on goal setting will give you effective guidelines to help you to use this technique effectively.

Goal setting can go wrong for a number of reasons:

Outcome goals can be set instead of performance goals. Where you are using outcome goals, and you fail to achieve the goal for reasons outside your control, this can be very dispiriting and can lead to loss of enthusiasm and feelings of failure. Always set performance goals. Goals can be set unrealistically high. When a goal is perceived to be unreachable, no effort will be made to achieve it. Set realistic goals. Conversely goals can be set so low that you feel no challenge of benefit in achieving the goal. Setting goals has been a waste of time. Always set goals that are challenging.

Goals can be so vague that they are useless: it is difficult to know whether vague goals have been achieved. If achievement cannot be measured, then your self-confidence will not benefit from goal setting, nor can you observe progress towards a greater goal. Set precise, quantitative goals.

Goal setting can be unsystematic, sporadic and disorganized. Here goals will be forgotten, achievement of goals will not be measured and feedback will not occur into new goals. The major benefits of goal setting have been lost. Be organized and regular in the way that you use goal setting.

Too many unprioritised goals may be set, leading to a feeling of overload. Remember that you deserve time to relax and enjoy being human.

Where goal setting does go wrong, not only are the benefits of goal setting lost, but the whole process of goal setting can fall into disrepute.

By avoiding these problems, and setting goals effectively as described in the previous article, you can achieve and maintain strong forward momentum.

The 'Quantum Leap' Approach

One approach to goal setting for yourself and other people is the 'Quantum Leap' approach. This tries to force intense activity by setting a goal that will need a 'quantum leap' in activity to achieve it. This is a dangerous technique that should be used with care - it is very easy for the whole process of goal-setting to fall into disrepute where quantum leap goals are not met. Similarly if you are really not convinced that a goal is attainable, you will not put effort into achieving it. Managers using this approach should take care that they are not 'shot down' by someone firmly requesting information on how a quantum leap goal should be achieved.

Use this information to adjust the goal if it was set too high, or to set goals to acquire new skills or knowledge. Feeding back like this turns everything into a positive learning experience - even failing to meet a goal is a step forward towards perfect performance!

Remember that the fact of trying something, even if it does not work, often opens doors that would otherwise have remained closed.

Where you have achieved a goal this should feed back into your next goals.

If the goal was easily achieved, make your next goals harder

If the goal took a dispiriting length of time to achieve, make the next goals a little easier If you learned something that would lead you to change goals still outstanding, do so If while achieving the goal you noticed a deficit in your skills, set goals to fix this.

Remember too that goals change as you mature - adjust them regularly to reflect this growth in your personality. If goals do not hold any attraction any longer, then let them go - goal setting is your servant, not your master B it should bring you real pleasure, satisfaction and a sense of achievement.

When you have achieved a goal, take the time to enjoy the satisfaction of having achieved the goal. Absorb the implications of the goal achievement, and observe the progress you have made towards other goals.

If the goal was a significant one, or one that you had worked towards for some time, take the opportunity to reward yourself appropriately.

Use this information to adjust the goal if it was set too high, or to set goals to acquire new skills or knowledge.

Feeding back like this turns everything into a positive learning experience - even failing to meet a goal is a step forward towards perfect performance!

Where you have achieved a goal this should feed back into your next goals:

If the goal was easily achieved, make your next goals harder

If the goal took a dispiriting length of time to achieve, make the next goals a little easier

If you learned something that would lead you to change goals still outstanding, do so.

If while achieving the goal you noticed a deficit in your skills, set goals to fix this.

Remember too that goals change as you nature - adjust them regularly to reflect this growth in your personality. If goals do not hold any attraction any longer, then let them go - goal setting is your servant, not your master – it should bring you real pleasure, satisfaction and a sense of achievement.

At its simplest level the process of setting goals and targets allows you to choose where you want to go in life. By knowing precisely what you want to achieve, you know what you have to concentrate on and improve, and what is merely a distraction. Goal setting gives you long-term vision and short-term motivation. It focuses your acquisition of knowledge and helps you to organize your resources.

By setting sharp, clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals. You can see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind.

By setting goals you can:

Achieve more

Improve performance

Increase your motivation to achieve

Increase your pride and satisfaction in your achievements

Improve your self-confidence

Why do people fail to plan?

People don’t plan to fail they simply fail to plan.

Planning is the process by which you determine whether you should attempt the task, work out the most effective way of reaching your target, and prepare to overcome unexpected difficulties with adequate resources. It is the start of the process by which you turn empty dreams into achievements. It helps you to avoid the trap of working extremely hard but achieving little.

Planning is an up-front investment in success - by applying the planning process effectively you can:

Avoid wasting effort:

It is easy to spend large amounts of time on activities that in retrospect prove to be irrelevant to the success of the project. Alternatively you can miss deadlines by not assessing the order in which dependent jobs should be carried out. Planning helps you to achieve the maximum effect from a given effort.

Take into account all factors, and focus on the critical ones:

This ensures that you are aware of the implications of what you want to do, and that you are prepared for all reasonable eventualities.

Be aware of all changes that will need to be made. If you know these, then you can assess in advance the likelihood of being able to make those changes, and take action to ensure that they will be successful.

Gather the resources needed. This ensures that the project will not fail or suffer for lack of a critical resource. So that you conserve your own resources, avoid wasting ecological resources, make a fair profit and are seen as an effective, useful person.

The formal procedure of applying the planning process helps you to:

Take stock of your current position

Identify precisely what is to be achieved

Detail precisely and cost the who, what, when, where, why and how of achieving your target.

Assess the impact of your plan on your organization and the people within it, and on the outside world. Evaluate whether the effort, costs and implications of achieving your plan are worth the achievement.

Consider the control mechanisms, whether reporting, quality or cost control, etc. that are needed to achieve your plan and keep it on course.

There are a number of reasons why people avoid planning:

Organizational Problems:

Poor reward structures

Where an organization assumes success, it will often fail to reward it. Where failure occurs, then it may is punished in lack of promotion or redundancy. This often results in a situation where it is better for an individual to do nothing (and not draw attention) than risk trying to achieve something, fail and be punished.

Fire-fighting. An organization can be so deeply embroiled in crisis management and fire-fighting that it simply does not have the time to plan.

The 'get stuck in' culture

An organization may oppose planning as a waste of time. This may be the case where either the organization is doing a very simple job, or where managers are so experienced in a job that they do not appreciate that they are planning. The approach cripples inexperienced staff by denying them the benefits of planning, and puts more load on experienced managers.

Opposition to Time & Expense of Planning

Time spent on planning is an investment. Some organizations are culturally opposed to spending resources. Sometimes this may be appropriate, but often this is short-sighted.

Individual Avoidance of Planning

Where people are resistant to planning, this can result from:

People may simply not be bothered to devote the time to thinking a plan through. Lack of Commitment and Resistance to Change

The individuals may be not see the benefits of the planning process, may believe that there is no need to plan, or may perceive that things are OK as they stand.

By not taking action there is little risk of failure unless a problem is urgent and pressing. Whenever something worthwhile is attempted there is some risk of failure.

As individuals amass experience they may find that they rely less and less on formalized planning.

This may be appropriate. It is easy, however, to be overconfident and overestimate experience -forethought is rarely wasted and is often the mark of professionalism.

Poor Experience of Planning

People may have had a previous bad experience with planning, where plans have been long, cumbersome, impractical or inflexible. Planning, like anything, can be done badly. Done properly it can be highly beneficial.

Planning is best thought of as a cycle, not a straight-through process: once a plan has been devised it should be evaluated. This evaluation may be cost or number based, or may use other analytical tools. This analysis may show that the plan specified may cause unwanted consequences, may cost too much, or may simply not work.

In this case the planning process will have to cycle back to an earlier stage, or the plan may have to be abandoned altogether - the outcome of your planning may simply be that it is best to do nothing!

The stages of the planning cycle that will be explained below are:

Once we have examined the planning cycle we will look at managing change and completing projects.

How to Spot What Needs to be Done

Planning may be done on a routine basis or may need to be carried out as a result of new ideas, poor performance or pressure from customers or the organization's environment. This section examines how you can clarify the problems and opportunities that face you.

New Ideas

One simple approach to generating ideas is to look at what irritates you in your life and what seems unnecessarily laborious and tedious. Often this will prompt ideas for improvements, whether these are administrative changes in your organization or are ideas for new consumer products or services.

Once you have done this, prioritize the actions in order of importance so that you do not waste time on low priority tasks. It can also be helpful to set mock deadlines (allowing appropriate contingency time for overruns and unavoidable delays). This gives a target to work towards.

If some of the actions being carried out depend on the completion of other activities, it may be useful to carry out a Critical Path Analysis. This will show you the minimum length of time that will be needed to achieve the plan, and will help you to decide task priorities. It will also help you to identify the key activities to keep moving when your resource requirements conflict with other managers using the same resources.

To Do Lists are lists of tasks to be carried out to achieve goals. These goals might be specific targets, or may simply be the efficient administration of your day. By ordering these tasks in order of importance, you have prioritized your To Do List.

Whilst To Do Lists are very simple, they are also extremely powerful, both as a method of organizing yourself and as a method of reducing stress. Often problems may seem intimidatingly large or you may have a seemingly huge number of demands on your time. This may leave you with a feeling of loss of control, or of being overburdened with work, or of facing hopelessly huge obstacles.

The solution is often simple: write down the tasks that face you, and if they are large, break them down into their component elements. If these still seem large, break them down again. Do this until everything that you have to do is listed. Once you have done this, run through these jobs allocating priorities from A (very important) to F (unimportant). If too many tasks have a high priority, run through the list again and demote the less important high priority items. Once you have done this, rewrite the list in priority order. You will then have a precise, sharp plan that you can use to eliminate the problems you face in the order that they need to be eliminated. This allows you to separate important jobs from the many time-consuming trivial ones, and gives you control of the problems facing you, reducing stress hugely.

Even if the things you want to achieve do not seem overwhelming, To Do Lists are extremely useful ways or organizing yourself efficiently, and of motivating yourself to achieve what needs to be achieved efficiently.

Preparing To Do Lists

It is a good idea to prepare To Do Lists whenever it suits you. Some people recommend doing them at the end of each day for the next day, others at the beginning of a day, others whenever you feel that things are getting out of control - the important thing is that you use them in the way that suits you.

If you haven't used To Do List before, try them: they are one of the keys to being really productive.

Use KISS (Keep It Simple and Straightforward)

Keep the plan flexible

Consider transitional arrangements - how will you keep things going while you implement the plan?

Time management is a unique life-style. It is different and personal with each individual. It is an on going process that ends only in death.

Mark 8:36 "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"

It is only one life,

T'will soon be past,

Only what's done

for Christ will last.

My whole desire deeply turn away

Out of all time unto eternal Day,

I give myself, and all I call my own

To Christ forever, to be His alone.

When as a child I laughed and wept---time crept.

When as a youth I dreamed and talked---time walked.

When I became a fully grown man---time ran.

When older still I daily grew---time flew.

Soon I’ll find in journeying on---time gone.

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