The 25th hour - A guide to time management

"Either run the day, or the day runs you" - Jim Rohn

This quote describes the struggles of many busy individuals, like myself who are struggling with balancing work, studies, family, social life, leisure time, among 100 other priorities. A regular experience of mine is waking, hopeful and optimistic—not only will I meet all my deadlines, but I will work out and make a healthy home-cooked meal, too. I CAN DO ANYTHING!

Then life happens. I leave late, hit traffic, and arrive at my desk already frustrated with the world. Sitting down to finally knock out that project I’ve been procrastinating for weeks, I realize I’ve got back-to-back meetings until noon—and yes, I am already late for the first one.

I finally walk out of the last meeting, and I start wading through back-to-back emails, deal with annoyed clients, and then comes the pinnacle of frustration, a colleague comes in with a last-minute request “It should only take an hour,” they say. Haha, as if, try 3.

In one of the courses that I took, our professor discussed time management, and with every sentence about how to successfully manage time, I wanted to run away.

Throughout the class, I realized a few things:

1. I am awful at prioritizing important tasks

2. I tend to pile on tasks and get overwhelmed if I can't finish them on time

3. I NEED to do something about it as soon as possible

Obliterate that frog!

One interesting topic discussed during class revolved around the metaphorical destruction of the popular amphibian species, the frog. This analogy saw the frog(s) as the villain (i.e. the tasks we need to do) and how we can defeat it (i.e. eating that frog).

The originator of the idea, Brian Tracy, in his book, 'Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time', said that:

"If it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first.”

The idea here in a day, where you need to do multiple tasks, you should get rid of the difficult and most important tasks first.

So how can I stop the clock?

In his YouTube video, Ali Abdaal made me realize something profound,

Time is 100% under my control

Every time, I say I don't have time for this or not, it's a lie because what's happening is that I am actively choosing not to have time for this or that. From the video, the 5 most important tips I picked up, to conquer time and make the most out of the day, I must:

1: Set the table

Gaining complete clarity on the task before starting will avoid procrastination. This is how I can get the most work done in less time. By listing down all that I need to do on that given day.

2: Plan every day in advance

6 P formula – Proper, prior, planning, prevents poor performance. By creating that list at night for the next morning assists in planning. Separate lists for different purposes will help me track the performance.

3: Apply the 80/ 20 rule

80/ 20 rule is also known as the Pareto principle. 2 out of 10 tasks will be important. The number of tasks isn't, rather initiate the day with the important tasks (the ugliest frogs).

4: Take it one oil barrel at a time

Do one thing at a time and rinse and repeat. One at a time is the key to success.

5: Motivate yourself to action

Being a personal cheerleader and encouraging myself consonantly. I need to be optimistic and have an “I can do it attitude.'

Prepare, consume digest that frog:

Last Monday, I decided to try out these techniques because I knew I had a busy week coming up

I applied the Eisenhower matrix to set the table and list down my present tasks

The end of the month is coming up and I had several tasks to do so, so I planned in advance ensuring I got a good night’s rest and segregated tasks with time limits.

Then I applied the Pareto Principle and singled out the one task that is vital and finish it off. I had to compile a quarterly report at work which included descriptive information about performance, revenue generation in a progress report. I was putting it off because of how daunting it seemed.

30 mins in and I was exhausted and wanted to put it off again, so I motivated myself by telling myself that I can do it and how great it will feel once that awful, ugly frog had been eaten and digested. I gritted my teeth and went back into it, 2 hours later, it was done!

I felt a sense of accomplishment by completing the most important task at the beginning of the day rather than procrastinating it every time.

Final takeaway:

I realized that time management is more about managing myself than managing time. The truth is I can’t achieve time management because it’s a continuous process that evolves. Hence I need to treat it like a habit that I can develop, cultivate, and improve over time by using the methods described above. By doing this, I know that I won't be wishing for a couple extra hours every day!