When leaders climb up the corporate ladder, one of the things they say they lose is “time.” It seems to be a given that as one goes up the ranks, there will be more responsibilities, but there is less time available. However, if you look closely, is it really an issue of time?
One of the few things that each person on this planet equally has is time. Every day, we all have 24 hours at our disposal. We all have the same amount of time to do everything that we need to do. Why is it that for some, time is scarce?
Time management and task planning is the key. Without these two, no project or plan will be a success. No matter how inspiring or motivating your project is, if you fail at drawing out a feasible timeline for your project, it will result in failure.
As a motivational speaker and coach, I made a decision to further expand the reach of what I do, thus I ventured into podcasting. Since I launched my Podcast last month, time is of great essence to me. I need to accomplish a lot of things prior to the release of my weekly podcast. Boy, if you can only see what’s on my plate. It’s amazing that as I go along, things are getting easier and easier to do as these tasks are slowly being infused into my daily system. How do I do it? Time management and task planning – my two essentials in my podcasting journey.
When I was starting, I was groping trying to decide which one to do first and what’s next. Towards my third episode, when I started to have a better grasp of the tasks I needed, it all became a breeze. Things just started to flow smoothly. Let me share with you the secret:
I listed all the tasks I needed to do and identified which tasks go together. What tasks when I do, the end result would lead me to the next task. Once this was done, next thing I checked out is which are the urgent ones and which ones have the least importance.
From the list of urgent tasks, I pinned down the tasks that will require more of my time against those that are fastest to accomplish. I took on first those urgent tasks that required lesser time and progressed to those that required more time. Why did I do it this way? Following this flow of work, I was able to put movement in my list of tasks. It allowed me to accomplish the list faster. Same was done for the tasks in the other groups, and voila, I met my timeline for each podcast.
At the onset of any project or plan, we will definitely encounter difficulties. However, refrain from focusing on the difficulty and focus more on the goal. Plan out and use your time wisely. You will not only be more productive, but everything will be manageable.
Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it you can never get it back. – Harvey Mackay