The Truth about Time

If you had a bank that credited your account each morning with $86,400—with no balance carried from day to day—what would you do?

Well, you do have such a bank; where God deposits time.  Every morning, you are given 86,400 seconds. Every night, the minutes you have failed to use toward good purposes are tallied as “lost”.

There is not a way to carry a balance forward.  There is not a provision for an “overdraft”.  You can’t hoard, save, store, loan or invest it: You can only use it…

Here are some additional truths about time:

• No one can manage time. But you can manage those things that take up your time.
• Time is expensive. It has been estimated that, 80 percent of our day is spent on those things or those people that only bring us two percent of our results.
• Time is perishable. It cannot be saved for later.
• Time is measurable. Everyone has the same amount of time… What’s important is not how much time you have; it is how much you use.
• Time is irreplaceable. We never get time back once it is gone.
• Time is a priority. You have enough time for anything in the world you want to do; as long as it ranks high enough among your priorities.

Here’s an exercise that may help you capitalize on your time…

1. Make a list of everything you are doing during the course of your week.
2. Code each of these items as:
• Green – Activities you really love to do, and couldn’t imagine giving them up…
• Yellow – Activities that you do because you feel as though you have to; but you really don’t like them…
• Red – Activities that you really hate to do, and have a tendendancy to procrastinate about getting them done…
3. Identify how much time you are spending on each of these catagories.  This doesn’t have to be tracked to the minute; you can capture this in blocks through the day, or once at the end of the day.  If you color the blocks in a calendar or chart, this will give you a great overall picture of your activities.
4. Prioritize the ones you spend the most time on that are Yellow or Red as high-priority tasks to be outsourced or re-structured.

Does that list of Yellow and Red items include activities for your primary source of income?  If so, perhaps it’s time to design some Abundance back into your life…..

Tags: Productivity, Time Management