Identifying your prime time and time management lies

Lal Fonseka - Productivity Consultant, Brandix Lanka Limited

“Time is really the only capital that any human being has, and the only thing he can’t afford to lose” – Thomas Edison. In order to become an effective executive or even a student and manage your time properly, you will need to understand certain characteristics about yourself. A majority of the people does not know how to manage your time effectively. For a day, you get only 24 hours. This time period is restricted to all of us living in this world irrespective of the position you are holding.

Even to the lord Buddha or the Jesus Christ this is same. You will also need to conquer certain shortcomings of yourself. As rightly said by time-management expert Charles Hamman, there are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ characteristics. The important thing is that you understand what makes you tick so that you can programme yourself more efficiently to take advantage of your strong points and sideline your weaknesses. In other words, it is the effort to identify your ‘prime time’ and try to get the maximum benefit out of it.

In order to identify your ‘prime time’ from the time management perspective, you need to identify yourself on the following basis.

Morning people have the tendency to wake up refreshed and be ready to get going. They get up in the very early hours in the day. This is not confined only to week days. In my case, I have a habit of waking up daily at 4.00am irrespective of the day. When you wake up early in the day, you can start the day with a fresh mind. Some people treat the first hour of the workplace or school as a golden hour of the day. It is natural that the hours before noon are very productive for them. On the contrary, the afternoon hours are less productive for them. These types of people are often completely burnt out by four o’clock.

In addition, there is another set of people called as the evening person / night person: The people who wake up very slowly are known as the evening person or the night person.

By the time evening person finds himself ready to get going, midday is fast approaching. These people find it difficult to adjust themselves to the usual 9 to 5 schedule, because they are reaching their peak at around five o’clock. These types can often work up to midnight and beyond without much slip in their concentration. They do prefer work overtime without having any difficulty. In any case, they will be forced to work after hours mainly due to being difficult to finish their work during normal working hours. As a result early birds are badly affected in our atmosphere as compared to the night persons’ earnings.

Once you have decided the type to which you belong, try to discover what your ‘prime hours’ are, and shape your day around them. Even the people following the normal office working hours can exercise some rescheduling so that the high priority items are slotted in during the ‘peak or prime hours’.

The people in the globe could be categorised in the following manner as far as the effective time management is concern.

Task Oriented Person:

A person who shows maximum concern for work and production

People oriented Person:

A person who shows maximum concern for people and relationships

Are you a task oriented person, or a people oriented person?

Task oriented people love to take on challenging, long term problems that can keep them isolated from others for a long period of time. On the contrary, the people oriented types get bored quickly if they are assigned cumbersome paperwork or any other long term job that keeps them away from their associates. As a result, people oriented types have a hard time meeting deadlines.

The key to dealing with this characteristic is to make your profession fits your personality. The task oriented person may do well in analytical or budget roles but less well in personal or sales. Similarly people oriented type should consider the personnel or relationship oriented jobs. If you are a task oriented person who is marketing or a people oriented type in heavy paper work, make sure you schedule these ‘alien’ (to your personality) jobs during your peak hours, when you are in a position to devote the greatest discipline and concentration.

Intensive Person:

A person with high concentration levels for short spans of time.

Extensive Person:

A person with consistent concentration levels for long periods of time.

Are you an intensive worker or an extensive one?

The intensive type people find it easy to concentrate at their peak only for short spans of time. They tend to work in spurts and burn out quickly. This may lead to lot of jobs remaining incomplete.

The extensive they, on the other hand, are just as productive, but it takes them longer to complete the task. The slow, steady pace means that the extensive type do not need to have as many breaks or layoffs as the intensive type.

Being aware of your intensive or extensive status can help you adjust your pace to any necessary job. The intensive person can learn to schedule regular breaks to avoid untimely exhaustion. In addition, the intensive person has to be very sure that he or she has selected the most important task to do, because once doing so, he or she can have some energy left for another job after the first one is done. Extensive people have to make sure they leave enough time to complete the task without having to rush through at the end you may feel stressed out and overwhelmed with how much you have to do, if you believe that you can be more productive or learn to manage yourself and your time more efficiently, if you have an incredibly busy week ahead of you. Why not take a few minutes to read the following seven time management lies that are the main cause of our stress, burn out, and procrastination.

You might be surprised to catch yourself telling at least one of these lies before lunch time!

1. I can do it all on my own

This is one of the most frequent lies you tell yourself. After a few hours, you will have to admit that you were wrong. There simply is not enough time to do everything we usually plan on doing. Nor is there the need to do all of it. Often we are the ones who willingly put too much on our plate and then stress out about it.

So next time the thought “I can do it all!” crosses your mind – take a few deep breaths, relax and remind yourself that effective time management is not about doing more in a shorter amount of time. It is about enjoying what you do and doing it well!

2. It will only take a minute!

This is another frequent lie you and I are guilty of. It just seems easier to get small tasks off your hands first and then dedicate yourself fully to the priorities on your list. However, priorities are called this, because you should complete them ‘prior’ to any other tasks.

Do not kid yourself with the idea that “This will just take one minute”. This is one of the boldest lies you are confronted with. Nothing ever takes just a minute – and even if it does, any such interruption usually costs you anywhere from fifteen to thirty five minutes of your productive ‘flow’ time. It will take a minute. This is just a lip service. You are cheating to yourself by stating this.

3. If I only had more time, I would have finished off much more better

We often rationalise that if we only had more time we would be able to accomplish more. But the truth is that we are not going to get more than 1440 minutes a day or 86400 seconds per day, regardless of what we do or do not do and no time management system will help us accomplish this.

What makes the difference is not how much time you have, but how you choose to spend it.

4. I can do it better/faster than anyone else!

This is another myth you have. You often catch yourself with this white lie. In fact, it might not necessarily be a lie. You could do something better and faster than your colleagues, assistants and employees.

But it does not mean that you have to do it. This is so important that I am going to repeat it once again. Doing something better and faster than other people DOES NOT mean you should do it!

It means that you are ready to teach other people how to do it as well.

Initially it takes more time and patience, because the person will ask you tens of questions and inevitably make mistakes that YOU will have to correct. But you know what? Taking your time now to help people on your team improve their skills pays off ten times more in the long run.

5. You just need to find the Right Time Management System!

No you do not. You need to find balance. Balance between the amount of energy you spend and the amount of energy you restore.

Balance between your professional and personal life. Balance between what you have to complete and what you have to let go. I tried lots of different time management systems before I finally realised that the key to being effective while enjoying what you do, is not about learning how to prioritize tasks on your to-do list, but about choosing the right priorities and maintaining balance in your life.

6. You should be more productive!

This is again the overachiever talking in you and I can fully relate to this desire to do more, faster, better. It is hard not to feel guilty at the end of the day if you have not checked 10-15 different tasks off your to-do list.

But honestly this belief that we must always be productive and constantly push ourselves over our limits is the number one reason for burn out, fatigue and frustration in our society.

7. You are a procrastinator!

So am I. And so is 98.9% of the population. Procrastination is the result of the other Time Management misconceptions described above.

If you fill up your schedule with tens of different tasks, if you force yourself to break ‘efficiency records’, if you have trouble delegating, because you and only you can do it better, it is only natural that your mind will try to come up with any legitimate excuse to postpone some of your work load for later.

So next time you catch yourself procrastinating, ask yourself what is the true reason for your procrastination.

Do you feel overwhelmed by the amount of work that needs to be done?

Do you have problems concentrating on the task, because you feel tired and stressed out?

Are you bored, because somewhere down the road you started to perceive your work as a tiresome duty, not as something you are supposed to be enjoying?

Find the cause and there will be no need to procrastinate!