It’s not achievement for achievement sake.  It’s achieving your purpose and making meaning, while spending more time in your strengths and connecting to your values.  This is where your best results come from, and it’s how you can enjoy the journey, no matter what life throws your way.

Free Time Management Training

As an introduction to the system, I created a free 30 Day Boot Camp for Getting Results.   It’s called a boot camp because it’s hard-core.  It’s a 30 day, self-paced time management training course.  If you want to take your time management skills to the next level, then take the 30 Day Boot Camp for Getting Results.   Keep in mind that because it’s self-paced, you could do all 30 lessons in a day, if you choose to.  This may be one of the best time management training courses you ever take, and the price is tough to beat.

I originally created this on Sources of Insight, as part of a 30 Day Improvement Sprint, but I wanted to spin this off to give it more focus.   By having its own little spot on the Web, it’s easier for me to make improvements, and to send folks there that just want focused and free time management training.  I’ll also use it as an experiment as I find ways to simplify the information and make it more insightful and actionable.

Time Management Skills

Here are some of the time management skills you will learn, tune, and improve as part of the time management training:

• How to manage your time
• How to focus and direct your attention with skill
• How to spend more time on the things that really matter to you
• How to be the author of your life and write your story forward
• How to make the most of your your moments, days, weeks, months, and years
• How to use a simple system to achieve meaningful results
• How to achieve work-life balance
• How to play to your strengths and spend less time in weaknesses
• How to motivate yourself with skill and find your drive
• How to change a habit and make it stick
• How to improve your personal productivity and personal effectiveness

You will learn time management tips and strategies as part of a system, each lesson can be used by itself or “better together” with other lessons.  I tried to make each lesson as useful as possible, so you can keep building on your skills, as you learn new time management techniques.

Time Management Training Lessons at a Glance

Here are the 30 Lessons at a Glance that make up the time management training:

• Day 1 – Take a Tour of Getting Results the Agile Way
• Day 2 – Monday Vision – Use Three Stories to Drive Your Week
• Day 3 – Daily Outcomes – Use Three Stories to Drive Your Day
• Day 4 – Let Things Slough Off
• Day 5 – Hot Spots – Map Out What’s Important
• Day 6 – Friday Reflection – Identify Three Things Going Well and Three Things to Improve
• Day 7 – Setup Boundaries and Buffers
• Day 8 – Dump Your Brain to Free Your Mind
• Day 9 – Prioritize Your Day with MUST, SHOULD, and COULD
• Day 10 – Feel Strong All Week Long
• Day 11 – Reduce Friction and Create Glide Paths for Your Day
• Day 12 – Productivity Personas – Are You are a Starter or a Finisher?
• Day 13 – Triage Your Action Items with Skill
• Day 14 – Carve Out Time for What’s Important
• Day 15 – Achieve a Peaceful Calm State of Mind
• Day 16 – Use Metaphors to Find Your Motivation
• Day 17 – Add Power Hours to Your Week
• Day 18 – Add Creative Hours to Your Week
• Day 19 — Who are You Doing it For?
• Day 20 — Ask Better Questions, Get Better Results
• Day 21 – Carry the Good Forward, Let the Rest Go
• Day 22 – Design Your Day with Skill
• Day 23 — Design Your Week with Skill
• Day 24 – Bounce Back with Skill
• Day 25 – Fix Time. Flex Scope
• Day 26 – Solve Problems with Skill
• Day 27 – Do Something Great
• Day 28 – Find Your One Thing
• Day 29 – Find Your Arena for Your Best Results
• Day 30 – Take Agile Results to the Next Level

Key Links

• 30 Day Boot Camp for Getting Results
• Getting Results the Agile Way (Amazon) (Now available on Kindle!)
• Getting Results Knowledge Base (Checklists, guidelines, and how tos for focus, motivation, prioritizing, setting goals, time management, etc.)

Getting Results the Agile Way is a simple time management system for achievers.   Whether you are an underdog trying to make the most of what you’ve got, or you are simply somebody with a passion for more from life, you are an achiever in my book.  (After all, we are all an underdog at some point in our lives.)  This is a system to help you be YOUR best.

As a time management system, Getting Results the Agile Ways is focused on answering two very fundamental questions about time management:

1. What to do?
2. How to do it?

By figuring out what to do, you set the stage for meaningful results.  This is all about slowing down to speed up.  This also reiterates the idea that less is more.  Rather than spread yourself thin, the idea is to focus on what really matters to you, and create meaningful experiences.

Download the Free eBook

The Getting Started with Getting Results the Agile Way Guide is a short guide (14 pages) to help you get up and running fast.

• Download Getting Started with Getting Results the Agile Way Free eBook

Take it for a test-drive and get the system on your side.  Share it with friends, family, and whoever you want to help get more out of life and put the system on their side, too.

“Money often costs too much.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

You can make more money, flow more value, and expand yourself.  It all starts with a simple question:

… How much is an hour of your time worth?

One of the best ways to change your game is to change the value you put on an hour of your time. Why? Because it helps you focus and make trade-offs in how you spend your time. If you make $5 an hour, chances are that the activities that would make you $50 an hour are very different. In fact, it might not just a different skill set … it’s a different mindset, and a different set of expectations. It’s also a different set of jobs and experiences, and a different life style. If you want to make $50 an hour, then you do less of the $5 an hour things, and start doing more of the $50 an hour things.

Don’t get hung up on the money part.  Instead, use your hourly rate as a gauge and a yardstick to grow your capabilities and prioritize your time.  Also, use it to improve your efficiency and effectiveness, while driving from your life style, and finding creative ways to spend more time doing what you love.  And, always remember that you climb better ladders if you stay true to you.

How Much is Your Hour Worth?

How much are you selling your time for?  If you’re paid by the hour, you already know how much you are selling your time for. But that doesn’t mean that’s how much your time is worth. My first surprise was many moons ago during my early consulting days, when I found out I was being billed out at $100 an hour. I remember I wasn’t being paid that, but I was surprised that somebody thought my time was worth $100. Then I found out others were earning more, but working less … Hmmm, I thought to myself, “I’m doing something wrong.”

A friend of mine taught me a quick trick for figuring out how much your hourly rate is. He said, if you’re on salary, simply chop off the thousands and divide it in half. For example, if you make $20,000 per year, then, take 20 and divide it in half, so you are paid $10 per hour. If you make $40,000 per year, then take $40 and divide it in half, so you are paid, $20 an hour. If you make $100,000 per year, then take $100 and divide it in half, so you are paid $50 an hour. It’s not an exact science, but it gives you a working ballpark.

Is Your Time Worth More

I remember one of my friends asking the question, should Bill Gates pick up a penny? … or a dime? The default response is, “Of course” or “Why not?” Aside from the philosophical perspective, the point behind the question was that Bill Gates’ time is worth so much, that it costs him more to pick up a penny then spend that same time thinking up the next best thing. In other words, it’s a distraction, and it undermines spending his time on more valuable things.

How many metaphorical pennies do you pick up each day?

Asking the Question, Starts the Process

Simply by asking the question, what are $50 an hour activities? What are $100 an hour activities? What are $10,000 an hour activities, you start to see patterns and opportunities. For example, some coaches like Tony Robbins have charged $10,000 an hour. You can ask yourself, what sort of problems did he help solve that were worth that much?

If you start looking around, you can find models and examples of people that make more per hour. You can look at career paths and possibilities and you can see how much different types of jobs make per hour. More importantly, you can see the limits and limitations. For example, would it be realistic to expect to make $10,000 an hour waiting tables? If so, then where? If not, then what are some other paths, if making $10,000 an hour is an important benchmark for you.

The point is to cast a wide net and explore the paths, know the baseline, and know the ceilings of what’s possible. This will help you adjust your own expectations, as well as pick better paths.

It’s a Minimum, Not a Maximum

The point is to expand yourself and put more value on your time. After all, some say, time is all we’ve got. Just because you set your eyes on $100 per hour, means you should limit yourself to $100 per hour. In fact, you may find it easier to make $100 per hour, by going for $10,000 per hour. In the words of Bruce Lee, “Aim past your target.”

To do this, it means getting clarity on a few things. What is the market value of XYZ? For example, how much are people paying to do XYZ today? It means figuring out what skills you already have are undervalued, or you are not making the most from them. It also means getting clarity on what skills or experience you need to grow to move up the stack. The beauty is that models are everywhere, once you start looking for them.

In order to play this game though, it does mean you have to experiment and it does mean you have to play in arenas where you aren’t limited in what you can make. For example, as an entrepreneur or an Infopreneur in today’s world, you can test creating amazing products that change the world, while you’re changing your game. As a consultant or freelancer, you can test upping the ante on people paying a premium for your service or time. You can test splitting your offerings, by having a lower priced offer for one market, and a premium offer for another. Regardless, the point is to make it possible to explore what’s possible.

The Difference that Makes the Difference

The difference between the $10 an hour or the $100 an hour or the $10,000 an hour, might not be what you expect. While part of it might be skills and experience, a bigger part of it may in fact be how you build perception. At the end of the day, it’s not the intrinsic value, but the “perceived value” that people will pay for. And perception is reality. That’s why brand is such an extreme way to change the game. If two things are created equal, the better brand wins.

If you keep brand simple and think in terms of the three, five, or seven attributes that you want to be about (quality, value, beauty, etc.) then you can bake those into what you do. The other key is to make sure these align with your own values so that you can be authentic and play to your natural strengths. This is a more sustainable way, and by aligning your values, you gain advantage in terms of energy, passion, and ultimately personal power.

Don’t be surprised if when you start looking through this lens that you see many people working less, but making more. All your preconceptions about how much something should be worth, may be vastly different than what the market pays, or the perceptions that people have built. Don’t be blinded by your own assumptions, and don’t be blind-sided by how the market works. Especially don’t be surprised that by simply changing your arena or your container can suddenly boost your hourly rate. For example, your skill might be worth $10 in one part of the country, but $100 in another. The reverse is also true. In fact, the Web makes this especially interesting because it’s a world wide market. What you do for $100 an hour, somebody in the world might do for $10. But remember too, it’s not just the intrinsic value, it’s the market value, the perception, and the brand.

So the keys that make the difference, aside from changing your own mindset, beliefs, and assumptions, and expanding your skills and experience, is testing arenas, and testing possibilities, and exploring the models that are already out there, while coming up with some models of your own.

Getting Started with Your New Hourly Rate

A great place to start is to start from where you already are. To do so, try this …

1. Figure out your current hourly rate. If you’re already paid by the hour, then good, you already know this number. If you’re paid by salary, then chop off the thousands, and divide it in two. For example, $60,000 is $30 an hour.
2. Identify what you want your hourly rate to be.
3. Explore the options and possibilities of how you can pull that off. Find some examples to model from and test. When you get stuck find mentors and people in your life that can help you see what you don’t see.

Good luck and may your skills be with you.

My Related Posts

• The 8 Steps to Wealth
• The Good Life
• Time is the Limiting Factor

Photo by TheRitters.

“The key is in not spending time, but in investing it.” — Stephen R. Covey

One of the main reasons To Do lists, backlogs, and lists of all the things you need to get done rots over time is because time changes what’s important.

That’s a good thing.

Because time changes what’s important, it’s a do a reset and a re-think on what your next best thing to do is.  Before you just grab things from your lists or from your backlog, ask yourself a few questions:

1. Is this still relevant?
2. Is this still important?
3. Is this my next best thing to do?

This is a quick way to step back and take a look from the balcony.  By asking if this is still relevant or still important, you can let things slough off and free yourself up for doing stuff that matters.  Letting stuff slough off makes space for the great stuff.

By asking if this is your next best thing to do you’re asking a question about windows of opportunity.   It’s true that a stitch in time saves nine, and you really can miss the boat for some things.  By paying attention to your windows of opportunity, you can get time on your side.

Photo by yunir.

“Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in.”– Napoleon Bonaparte

If you have five minutes to think about something, you actually have a lot.  You don’t have to spend a lot of time thinking to make a lot of progress.  You can spend five minutes on a problem and actually cover a lot of ground more effectively.  That is, if you have a framework.

At Microsoft, I end up with a lot of short blocks of time, whether it’s in between meetings or in between tasks.  It’s easy to fall in the trap of, “I don’t have enough time to think about that.”  Well, the reality is, it’s actually very effective to use short time blocks to both train your thinking while solving your problems, rather than let them pile up.

The key is to use Five-Minute Thinks.  Five-Minute thinks are an effective time-management technique for your mind.  A Five-Minute Think is simply a structured approach to thinking that focuses your thinking and helps you identify the goal, explore options, narrow down, and then conclude.  Using a Five-Minute Think helps you avoid locking onto one idea too quickly, falling into analysis-paralysis, and over-engineering.  By casting a wide net, exploring a topic, and then narrowing down potential paths, you can naturally use your thinking skills very effectively.  You can also “chip away at the stone” of larger problems with these little time blocks.

In the book De Bono’s Thinking Course, Revised Edition , Edward De Bono shares the idea and approach of Five-Minute Thinks.

The Five-Minute Think
The framework for the Five-Minute Think is simple.  According to De Bono, to do a Five-Minute Think:

1. One minute: Target and Task
2. Two minutes: Expand and Explore
3. Three minutes: Contract and Conclude

That’s it!

Don’t spend more than five minutes or you’re defeating the purpose.  What you might do is use another Five-Minute Think on another aspect of the problem, but don’t turn Five-Minute Thinks into 10, 20, or 30 minute thinks.  By limiting your time, you’re telling your mind to focus and fully engage for a short-burst.  You’ll improve with practice.

One Minute — Target and Task
The outcome of your one-minute should be the target and the goal defined precisely, such as “Identify ways to improve my blogging speed.”  In other words,  — what do you want to accomplish with your Five-Minute Think?

At this step, you define the target and the task precisely.  The target is your focus of the thinking.  The target can be as general or as tight as you want.  The task is setting the goal – it’s the thinking task you’ll do.  For example, you might set the goal of reviewing something to improve it.  You might set the goal of finding problems.  You might make the task a creative exercise, such as “How else could I …” or “How could xyz be made more useful?”

Two Minutes – Expand and Explore
I think of it as elaborating on the problem, making a mental map, and exploring options and ideas.

In this part of the phase, you open up.  Don’t be critical or judging.  Just start flowing what you know and any ideas that come to mind.   You can scan your experience, analyze the situation, or look for familiar patterns.

Keep it positive and free-flowing.  According to De Bono, you’re “opening up the field, filling in the map, exploring the territory.”

Three Minutes – Contract and Conclude
This is where you spiral down on the problem.   Try to make sense of what you’ve got and get to a definite conclusion.  According to De Bono, this might be a “solution, creative idea, additional alternative, or an opinion.”

The next time you have five minutes to think about something, test your ability to define, expand, explore, and contract on the problem.  Simply directing your thinking will improve it over time.

Photo by BTO Educational.

Time is all you have.  Master your time and you master your life.  Time management is one of those wonderful, timeless topics with so many lessons and so many great mentors.  To get a better view on time management, we can first  “stand on the shoulder’s of giants.”  To do so, let’s take a stroll through some words of wisdom from our sages of the ages.

While organizing my quotes collection, I gained more clarity on the simple, but powerful lessons of time.  I was able to distill the wisdom of the ages into a handful of lessons to help you master time: Time is what you make of it.  You don’t have time, you make it.  It’s your most valuable resource.  Invest time.  Investing in your time is investing in your life.  Don’t dwell on the train you missed.  Catch the next train.   Time changes what’s important. You can’t buy time.  Time is all we have.   Time is a teacher. Time is a judge.  Time is a healer.  Time is a friend.

Top 10 Time Management Quotes

I had a tough time picking the best 10 time management quotes.  There are so many great quotes.   That said, here are my top 10 best  time management quotes:

1. “Time and I against any two.“ – Baltasar Gracian
2. “Time is a great healer, but a poor beautician.“ – Lucille S. Harper
3. “He that rises late must trot all day.“ – Benjamin Franklin
4. “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift, that is why they call it the present.“ – Kung Fu Panda
5. “When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute — then it’s longer than any hour. That’s relativity!“ – Albert Einstein
6. “Time stays long enough for those who use it.“ – Leonardo Da Vinci
7. “A day wasted on others is not wasted on one’s self.“ – Charles Dickens
8. “Time is the rider that breaks youth.“ – George Herbert
9. “No man goes before his time — unless the boss leaves early“. – Groucho Marx
10. “Time makes heroes but dissolves celebrities.“ – Daniel J. Boorstin

I want to throw in another quote that one of my mentors shares with me to help keep time in perspective.  It goes a little something like this: “Live each day, as if it’s your last, but plan to live 100 years.”

Change and Time

Time as a powerful change agent:

• “Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations.“ – Faith Baldwin
• “Seasons change.“ – Unknown
• “Time cuts down all, both great and small.“ – Unknown
• “One can always trust to time. Insert a wedge of time and nearly everything straightens itself out.“ – Norman Douglas
• “Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.“ – George Bernard Shaw
• “Oh Time! the beautifier of the dead, adorer of the ruin, comforter and only healer when the heart hath bled… Time, the avenger! “- Lord Byron

Focus and Priorities

Time is a great forcing function and a great tool to help you prioritize:

• “To do two things at once is to do neither.“ – Publius Syrus
• “People always make time to do the things they really want to do.“ – Anonymous
• “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." – Samuel Johnson
• “Is what I’m doing or about to do getting us closer to our objective?“ – Robert Townsend
• “What comes first, the compass or the clock? Before one can truly manage time (the clock), it is important to know where you are going, what your priorities and goals are, in which direction you are headed (the compass). Where you are headed is more important than how fast you are going. Rather than always focusing on what’s urgent, learn to focus on what is really important.“ – Unknown
• “We realize our dilemma goes deeper than shortage of time; it is basically a problem of priorities. We confess, we have left undone those things that ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.“ – Charles E. Hummel
• “One of the greatest resources people cannot mobilize themselves is that they try to accomplish great things. Most worthwhile achievements are the result of many little things done in a single direction.“ – Nido Qubein
• “Time has no meaning in itself unless we choose to give it significance.“ – Leo Buscaglia
• “He who every morning plans the transaction of the day and follows out the plan, carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life.“ – Victor Hugo
• “Review our priorities, ask the question; what’s the best use of our time right now?“ – Alan Lakein
• “If you want to make good use of your time, you’ve got to know what’s most important and then give it all you’ve got.“ – Lee Iacocca
• “The idea is to make decisions and act on them — to decide what is important to accomplish, to decide how something can best be accomplished, to find time to work at it and to get it done.“ – Karen Kakascik
• “Time has a wonderful way of weeding out the trivial.“ – Richard Ben Sapir
• “It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?“ – Henry David Thoreau
• “In all planning you make a list and you set priorities.“ – Alan Lakein

Future

The future.  It’s always just beyond our reach:

• “The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.“ – C. S. Lewis
• “Always remember that the future comes one day at a time.“ – Dean Acheson
• “City people try to buy time as a rule, when they can, whereas country people are prepared to kill time, although both try to cherish in their mind’s eye the notion of a better life ahead.“ – Edward Hoagland
• “If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find we have lost the future.“ – Winston Churchill

Judgment and Time

Time is a Judge. Things that stand the test of time, pass the greatest test:  :

• “Time is the only critic without ambition.“ – John Steinbeck
• “Time is the fairest and toughest judge.“ – Edgar Quinet
• “Time, whose tooth gnaws away at everything else, is powerless against truth.“ – Thomas Huxley
• “Time will explain it all. He is a talker, and needs no questioning before he speaks.“ – Euripides

Lost Time

You don’t get it back:

• “What a folly it is to dread the thought of throwing away life at once, and yet have no regard to throwing it away by parcels and piecemeal.“ – John Howe
• “One thing you can’t recycle is wasted time.“ – Unknown
• “Lost time is never found again.“ – Proverb
• “He lives long that lives well; and time misspent is not lived but lost.“ – Thomas Fuller
• “For disappearing acts, it’s hard to beat what happens to the eight hours supposedly left after eight of sleep and eight of work.“ – Doug Larson
• “Lost time is never found again.“ – Proverb
• “For disappearing acts, it’s hard to beat what happens to the eight hours supposedly left after eight of sleep and eight of work.“ – Doug Larson

Making and Saving Time

The myths and truths of making and saving time:

• “You will never find time for anything. If you want time, you must make it.“ – Charles Bixton
• “To choose time is to save time.“ – Francis Bacon
• “In truth, people can generally make time for what they choose to do; it is not really the time but the will that is lacking.“ – Sir John Lubbock
• “You love what you find time to do.“ – Unknown
• “To save time is to lengthen life.“ – Unknown
• “I like to do all the talking myself. It saves time, and prevents arguments.“ – Oscar Wilde
• “He was always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time.“ – Oscar Wilde

Mastering Time

Master your time, to master your life:

• “Once you have mastered time, you will understand how true it is that most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a year – and underestimate what they can achieve in a decade!“ – Tony Robbins
• “Time = life; therefore, waste your time and waste of your life, or master your time and master your life.“ – Alan Lakein
• “I must govern the clock, not be governed by it.“ – Golda Meir
• “He who lets time rule him will live the life of a slave.“ – John Arthorne
• “A man must be master of his hours and days, not their servant.“ – William Frederick Book
• “For tribal man space was the uncontrollable mystery. For technological man it is time that occupies the same role.“ – Marshall Mcluhan
• “The clock has decided to take time into its own hands.“ – Anynomous
• “Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else.“ – Peter F. Drucker

Money and Time

Time is money.  Money is time.  Don’t spend it all in one place:

• “Time is money.“ – Benjamin Franklin
• “Time is money says the proverb, but turn it around and you get a precious truth. Money is time.“ – George Robert Gissing
• “Time will take your money, but money won’t buy time.“ – James Taylor
• “An inch of time cannot be bought with an inch of gold.“ – Proverb
• “I cannot afford to waste my time making money.“ – Louis Agassiz
• “Money, I can only gain or lose. But time I can only lose. So, I must spend it carefully.“ -  Unknown
• “Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.“ – Carl Sandburg
• “The supply of time is a daily miracle. You wake up in the morning and lo! Your purse is magnificently filled with 24 hours of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe of life. It is yours! The most precious of your possessions.“ – Arnold Bennet

Moments in Time

Savor your moments.  They add up to a life time::

• “The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.“ – Rabindranath Tagore
• “One must learn a different sense of time, one that depends more on small amounts than big ones.“ – Sister Mary Paul
• “You’re writing the story of your life one moment at a time.“ – Doc Childre and Howard Martin
• “But what minutes! Count them by sensation, and not by calendars, and each moment is a day.” – Benjamin Disraeli
• “One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is Doomsday.“ – Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by; but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by.“ – James M. Barrie
• “To get all there is out of living, we must employ our time wisely, never being in too much of a hurry to stop and sip life, but never losing our sense of the enormous value of a minute.“ – Robert Updefraff
• “The infinite is in the finite of every instant.“ – Unknown
• “Clocks slay time… time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.“ – William Faulkner
• “A good holiday is one spent among people whose notions of time are vaguer than yours.“ – John B. Priestly
• “Flow in the living moment. — We are always in a process of becoming and nothing is fixed. Have no rigid system in you, and you’ll be flexible to change with the ever changing. Open yourself and flow, my friend. Flow in the total openness of the living moment. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo.“ – Bruce Lee
• “The moment is freedom. — I couldn’t live by a rigid schedule. I try to live freely from moment to moment, letting things happen and adjusting to them.“ -  Bruce Lee
• “The timeless moment. — The “moment” has no yesterday or tomorrow. It is not the result of thought and therefore has no time.“ – Bruce Lee

Now  and In the Moment

There’s a lot to be said for be here, now:

• “Now is the watchword of the wise.“ – Proverb
• “It’s how we spend our time here and now, that really matters. If you are fed up with the way you have come to interact with time, change it.“ – Marcia Wieder
• “I don’t think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.” – W. Somerset Maugham
• “Realize that now, in this moment of time, you are creating. You are creating your next moment. That is what’s real.“ – Sara Paddison
• “This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.“ – Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “Make a good use of the present.“ – Horace
• “Be intent on the perfection of the present day.“ – William Law
• “A better present makes for a good past and future.“ – Kazi Shams
• “Never let yesterday use up today.“ – Richard H. Nelson
• “One day at a time–this is enough. Do not look back and grieve over the past for it is gone; and do not be troubled about the future, for it has not yet come. Live in the present, and make it so beautiful it will be worth remembering.“ – Unknown
• “The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now.“ – Proverb
• “The greatest loss of time is delay and expectation, which depend upon the future. We let go the present, which we have in our power, and look forward to that which depends upon chance, and so relinquish a certainty for an uncertainty.“ – Seneca
• “The infinite is in the finite of every instant.“ – Unknown

Procrastination

Why do today, what you can put off to tomorrow? … or the day after.  Procrastination is a great way to avoid getting things done:

• “If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.“ – Bruce Lee
• “The surest way to be late is to have plenty of time.“ – Leo Kennedy
• “To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing.“ – Eva Young
• “A year from now you will wish you had started today.“ – Karen Lamb
• “You may delay, but time will not.“ – Benjamin Franklin
• “Never leave ’till tomorrow which you can do today.“ – Benjamin Franklin
• “What may be done at any time will be done at no time.“ – Proverb
• “You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.“ – Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “The time for action is now. It’s never too late to do something.“ – Carl Sandburg
• “You may delay, but time will not.“ – Benjamin Franklin
• “Better three hours too soon, than one minute too late.“ – William Shakespeare
• “Procrastination is the thief of time.“ – Joseph Heller
• “Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.“ – Napolean Hill
• “When the time is right, you just got to do it.“ – Jack Simplot

Productivity and Managing Your Time

Time is always a key factor in your productivity.  The best time management quotes on productivity:

• “The first hour of the morning is the rudder of the day.“ – Henry Ward Beecher
• “It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.“ – Bruce Lee
• “Make measurable progress in reasonable time.“ – Jim Rohn
• “One realizes the full importance of time only when there is little of it left. Every man’s greatest capital asset is his unexpired years of productive life.“ – P. W. Litchfield
• “There’s never enough time to do it right, but there’s always enough time to do it over.” – Jack Bergman
• “The less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in.“ – Lord Chesterfield
• “So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine, and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person’s genius is confined to a very few hours.“ – Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “What do you want to get done? In what order of importance? Over what period of time? What is the time available? What is the best strategy for application of time to projects for the most effective results?“ – Ted W. Engstrom
• “Anything that is wasted effort represents wasted time. The best management of our time thus becomes linked inseparably with the best utilization of our efforts.“ – Ted W. Engstrom
• “I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.“ – Ian Fleming
• “If you have time to whine and complain about something then you have the time to do something about it.“ – Anthony J. D’Angelo
• “If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.“ – Bruce Lee
• “It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.“ – Bruce Lee
• “If you haven’t got the time to do it right, when will you find the time to do it over?“ – Jeffery J. Mayer
• “People who never have any time on their hands are those who do the least.“ – George C. Lichtenberg
• “Don’t watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going.“ – Samuel Levenson
• “One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.“ – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
• “We never shall have any more time we have, and we have always had, all the time there is.“ – Thomas A. Bennett

Spending Time

It’s not what you’ve got.  It’s how you spend it.  The best time management quotes on spending time:

• “The key is in not spending time, but in investing it.“ – Stephen Covey
• “Life is half spent before one knows what it is.“ – Proverb
• “Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.“ – Will Rogers
• “We must use time as a tool, not as a couch.“ – John F. Kennedy
• “Take care of the minutes and the hours will take care of themselves.“ – Lord Chesterfield
• “The secret of your future is hidden in your daily routine.“ – Mike Murdock
• “People who cannot find time for recreation are obliged sooner or later to find time for illness." – John Wanamaker
• “Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.“ – Henry David Thoreau
• “Time is like money, the less we have of it to spare the further we make it go.“ – Josh Billings
• “Time is not measured by the passing of years, but by what one does, what one feels and what one achieves.“ – Jawaharlal Nehru
• “Time is Too slow for those who wait, Too swift for those who fear, Too long for those who grieve, Too short for those who rejoice. But for those who love, time is not.“ – Henry Van Dyke
• “Take care in your minutes, and the hours will take care of themselves.“ – Lord Chesterfield
• “When we are doing what we love, we don’t care about time. For at least at that moment, time doesn’t exist and we are truly free.“ - Wieder Marcia
• “We must use time creatively — and forever realize that the time is always hope to do great things.“ – Martin Luther King Jr.
• “Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much can be done if we are always doing.“ – Thomas Jefferson
• “Ordinary people think merely of spending time. Great people think of using it.“ – Unknown
• “When men are not regretting that life is so short, they are doing something to kill time.“ – Edgar Watson Howe
• “Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.“ – Charles Caleb Colton
• “The best thing to spend on your children is your time.“ – Louise Hart
• “When one has much to put into them, a day has a hundred pockets.“ – Friedrich Nietzsche
• “How you spend your time is more important than how you spend your money. Money mistakes can be corrected, but time is gone forever.“ – David Norris

Success and Time

Successful people make time work for them.  The best time management quotes on success:

• “Well arranged time is the surest mark of a well arranged mind.” – Pitman
• “Success in the majority of circumstances depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.“ – Charles De Montesquiu
• “The great dividing line between success and failure can be expressed in five words: I did not have time.“ – Franklin Field
• “Set priorities for your goals. A major part of successful living lies in the ability to put first things first. Indeed, the reason most major goals are not achieved is that we spend our time doing second things first.“ – Robert J. Mckain
• “One worthwhile task carried to a successful conclusion is worth half-a-hundred half-finished tasks.“ – Malcolm S. Forbes
• “A wise person does at once, what a fool does at last. Both do the same thing; only at different times.“ – Baltasar Gracian
• “The common man is not concerned about the passage of time, the man of talent is driven by it.“ – Arthur Shoppenhauer
• “Success is simple. Do what’s right, the right way, at the right time.“ -  Arnold H. Glasgow
• “Time is the most precious element of human existence. The successful person knows how to put energy into time and how to draw success from time.“ – Denis Waitley
• “Time invested in improving ourselves cuts down on time wasted in disapproving of others.“ – Unknown
• “Time spent in getting even would be better spent in getting ahead.“ – Unknown
• “Monday is the key day of the week.“ – Proverb
• “Why kill time when one can employ it.“ – Proverb

The Passing of Time

As one of my teachers used to say, “Time passes, will you?"  Time Flies.  It can also come to a standstill.  Perspective changes everything:

• “This too shall pass.“ – Unknown.
• “Time stays, we go.“ – H.L. Mencken
• “Time and tide wait for no man.“ – Geoffrey Chaucer
• “The passage of time is simply an illusion created by our brains.“ – A.M.W. Ball
• “The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.“ – Jean Paul
• “But at my back I always hear time’s winged chariot hurrying near.“ – Andrew Marvell
• “Time goes, you say? Ah, no! alas, time stays, we go.“ – Henry Austin Dobson
• “Everything in this life takes longer than you think except life itself.“ – Unknown
• “Love makes time pass away and time makes love pass away.“ – Proverb
• “Time destroys the speculation of men, but it confirms nature.“ – Marcus T. Cicero
• “We sleep, but the loom of life never stops, and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up in the morning.“ – Henry Ward Beecher
• “Nothing is swifter than our years.“ – Ovid
• “Clocks slay time… time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.“ – William Faulkner
• “For disappearing acts, it’s hard to beat what happens to the eight hours supposedly left after eight of sleep and eight of work.“ – Doug Larson

The Past

The past is always behind us, and nothing beats 20/20 hindsight:

• “You can never plan the future by the past.“ – Edmund Burke
• “What is human life? The first third a good time; the rest remembering about it.“ – Mark Twain
• “Look not mournfully into the Past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present. In is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy Future, without fear, and a manly heart.“ – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• “Nothing is improbable until it moves into the past tense.“ – George Ade
• “It is difficult to live in the present, ridiculous to live in the future, and impossible to live in the past. Nothing is as far away as one minute ago.“ – Jim Bishop

The Value of Time

Value is in the eye of the beholder.  The best time management quotes on the value of time:

• “Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.“ – Laertius Diogenes
• “If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.“ – Bruce Lee
• “If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.“ – Bruce Lee
• “Nothing is to be rated higher than the value of the day.“ – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
• “Until you value yourself, you will not value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.“ – M. Scott Peck
• “A man who dares to waste one hour of life has not discovered the value of life.“ – Charles Darwin
• “Your greatest asset is your earning ability. Your greatest resource is your time.“ – Brian Tracy
• “Don’t be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of. One man gets only a week’s value out of a year while another man gets a full year’s value out of a week.“ – Charles Richards
• “If, before going to bed every night, you will tear a page from the calendar, and remark, there goes another day of my life, never to return, you will become time conscious.“ – A.B. Zu Tavern
• “Time is really the only capital that any human being has, and the only thing he can’t afford to lose.’” – Thomas Edison
• “All my possessions for a moment of time.“ – Queen Elizabeth
• “Time is at once the most valuable and the most perishable of all our possessions.“ – John Randolph
• “Everything requires time. It is the only truly universal condition. All work takes place in time and uses up time. Yet most people take for granted this unique, irreplaceable, and necessary resource. Nothing else, perhaps, distinguishes effective executives as much as their tender loving care of time.“ – Peter F. Drucker
• “Time is the scarcest resource of the manager; If it is not managed, nothing else can be managed.“ – Peter F. Drucker

Time as a Healer

Time is a healer.  The best time management quotes on time as a healer:

• “Time heals all wounds, unless you pick at them.“ – Shawn Alexander
• “He that lacks the time to mourn, lacks time to mend.“ – Unknown
• “Time is the glue that bonds a broken heart, but love is the air which dries the glue.“ -  J. Franklin

Time as a Teacher

Time as a Teacher:

• “Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.“ – Hector Louis Briloz
• “Time as he grows old teaches many lessons. – Aeschylus Time is the wisest counselor of all.” – Pericles
• “Time is the school in which we learn, time is the fire in which we burn.“ – Delmore Schwartz
• “Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.“ – Rodin
• “Time is the wisest of all counselors.“ – Plutarch

Wasting Time

Waste not, want not.  Of all your things to waste, wasting time should be your last choice.  The best time management quotes on wasting time:

• “It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.“ – Henry Ford
• “Whether it’s the best of times or the worst of times, it’s the only time we’ve got.“ – Art Buchwald
• “You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.“ – Henry David Thoreau
• “We are condemned to kill time, thus we die bit by bit. – Octavio Paz The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.“ – Bertrand Russell
• “Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.“ – William Penn
• “Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.“ – Laertius Diogenes
• “All that really belongs to us is time; even he who has nothing else has that.“ – Baltasar Gracian

I hope you’ve enjoyed this round up of time management quotes.  Time really is a one of our most important resources and time management is a great focus for skilled living.  Mastering your time is something you can work at each day.  In fact, every moment is a new chance to apply the lessons above.  For example, the next time you tell yourself you don’t have time, remind yourself that you don’t have time, you make time.

Feel free to share your favorite time managements quotes in the comments section below.  One of the ways to find some of your favorite time management quotes is to ask, what are the saying that actually shaped how you deal with time? (for example, for many people, there’s no time like the present, while for others, there’s always tomorrow.)

My Related Posts

• Inspirational Quotes
• Motivation Quotes
• Productivity Quotes

Photo by Irargerich.

Who doesn’t want more time?  We all want more time to do the things we want to do.  The reality is, we have to make the most of the time we’ve got.  The real problem is we spend time on the wrong things, we do things the least efficient way, or we simply let time expand to fill its container (see Parkinson’s Law.)    The real key to improving time management is first changing how you think about your time and taking steps to own how you spend it.

In the book, The 80/20 Individual: How to Accomplish More by Doing Less-The Nine Essentials o , Richard Koch teaches us that there is no shortage of time.

Key Take Aways
Here are my key take aways:

• Time is a part of everything.  It’s not a separate thing that you can just get more of or less of.  Time is  a fundamental part of everything you do.
• Make the very best use of your time.  It’s not the time you’ve got, it’s how you use it.  Instead of telling yourself there aren’t enough hours in the day, optimize the time you’re already spending.  For example, focus is a powerful tool for improving how you spend your time.
• Work less, accomplish more.  Focus on unique value.    You could work a 2 day week and achieve 60 percent more.  This assumption is based on the idea that you cut out the activities that are least effective, and you spend your time on your 20 percent spike.

Really it comes down to consistently spending your time where you get your greatest return.  I’ve gradually learned to spend more time where it counts, by being mindful, setting boundaries and time budgets, playing to my strengths, and improving my techniques and skills.

Time is Not “Other”
Time is not “other.”  It’s a part of everything we do.  We should think of product-time and service-time.  Koch writes:

First, in business as in the rest of life, time is not “other.”  It is part of the physical things we make and provide to customers.  It is part of our products, part of our services, part of our raw material, part of our output.  Therefore, we should not think of what we do for customers as separate from the time we take to do it.  We should not think of products or services on the one-hand, and time on the other.  We should think of “product-time” and “service-time.”  Time is part of what we add or subtract.  Providing an existing product or service in a much faster way could change its economics and offer you a terrific new business opportunity.

Time if Not Finite and Short
Time is a part of what we do and who we are.  Koch writes:

Second, time is not finite and short, nor is it our enemy or a commodity in extremely short supply.  Time is an integral part of what we do and who we are.  Time is a dimension where, like space, we can express ourselves and create value for others, and therefore ourselves.  People living in a free society rarely say, “I don’t have enough physical room to express myself; there is not enough space in my life.”  But people often do say, “I don’t have enough time to express myself; I don’t have enough time to do what I want.”  It sounds more plausible; it makes as little sense.

The Problem is Our Use of Time
It’s not our lack of time.  It’s how we use it.  Koch writes:

By combining the theories of Einstein and Pareto, you’ll discover that if 80 percent of the wealth (or anything else desirable) is created in less than 20 percent of the time available, then there is no shortage of time.  For individuals and business alike, there is no shortage of time.  The problem is our trivial use of time, not time itself.  We use our time most productively for only a small part of our existence; most of what we do matters little.  In other words, our problem is triviality itself, few people achieve their full potential, or anywhere close to it.

Achieve More with Less
You could work a 2 day week and achieve 60 percent more.  This is about what you focus on and whether you spend your time where it makes the biggest difference.  Koch writes:

Any venture or person could achieve much more while using much less time.  The 80/20 individual principle suggests that you could work a two-day week and still achieve 60 percent more than you do now.

The Very Best Use of Our Time Must Define Our Business and Make it Unique
Whatever is the best possible way you can spend your time, can help you define your business and make it unique.  It’s really about spending your time on your 20 percent spike.  Koch writes:

Einstein’s theory reinforces the idea of the 20 percent spike and redefines it in terms of time.  In other words, the activities that make the very best use of our time must define our business and make it unique.

My Related Posts

• The 20 Percent Spike
• Outsource Your 80 Percent Spike
• The Secret of Time Management
• Consolidate Your Discretionary Time
• 4 Major Time Wasters Caused by Management Deficiency

Photo by azrainman.

There are 4 key time wasters that show up from management and organizational ineffectiveness.  One time waster is a recurring crisis.  This means there’s a lack of system foresight to anticipate and respond effectively.  Another time waster is friction and feuding among teams.  This is usually a sign of overstaffing.  Another time waster is too many meetings.  Too many meetings are often a sign of the wrong organizational structure.  Another significant time waster is bad information.  People need accurate, relevant, timely information to do do their jobs well.

In The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management (Collins Business Essentials) , Peter Drucker writes about the 4 major time-wasters caused by organizational and management deficiency.

Key Take Aways
Here’s my key take aways:

• There’s 4 main signs of management deficiency:  1) lack of system foresight, 2) overstaffing, 3) malorganization, and 4) malfunction in information.
• Meetings should never be allowed to be the main demand.  Meetings should not be the main demand of a knowledge worker’s time.  If the meetings are producing results that’s one thing.  But if the purpose of each meeting becomes planning another meeting, you have a problem.
• If you’re spending too much time on interpersonal issues, it’s a sign of overstaffing.  If you’re spending all your time on feuds and friction, and fighting over space, it’s a sign of overstaffing.  Lean organizations stay focused on the results and either collaborate as a team, or at least don’t get in each other’s way (they’re too busy working on their own work.)
• If you keep running into the same crisis, it’s a lack of system foresight.   Surprises happen, but if you keep running into the same surprises, then there’s a lack of system foresight.  It means you don’t know the system you’re in and you don’t know how it works and you’re not anticipating events in the systems.
• If you don’t have accurate, relevant, timely information, then you’re flying blind.  People can’t do their jobs effectively without the right information.  Bad information wastes everybody’s time.  If you don’t have accurate, relevant, timely business information, then you can’t make effective business decisions.

4 Major Time-Wasters Caused by Management and Organizational Deficiency
According to Drucker, here are the 4 major time-wasters caused by management and organizational deficiency:

1.    Lack of system or foresight
2.    Overstaffing
3.    Malorganization
4.    Malfunction in information

Lack of System or Foresight
If you’re facing a recurrent crisis, then it’s a lack of system foresight.  Drucker writes:

The first organizational time-wasters result from lack of system or foresight.  The symptom to look for is the recurrent “crisis,” the crisis that comes back year after year.  A crisis that recurs a second time is a crisis that must not occur again.  The annual inventory crisis belongs here.  That with the computer we now can meet it even more “heroically” and at greater expense then we could in the past is hardly a great improvement.  A recurrent crisis should always have been foreseen.  It can therefore either be prevented or reduced to a routine that clerks can manage.  The definition of a “routine” is that it makes unskilled people without judgment capable of doing what it took near-genius to do before; for a routine puts down in systematic, step-by-step form what a very able person learned in surmounting yesterday’s crisis.

Overstaffing
Time-waste is a byproduct of overstaffing.  Drucker writes:

Time-waste often results from overstaffing.  A workface may, indeed, be too small for the task.  And the work then suffers, if it gets done at all.  But this is not the rule.  Much more common is the workforce that is too big for effectiveness, the workforce that spends, therefore, an increasing amount of time “interacting” rather than working.

A Reliable Symptom of Overstaffing
If you’re spending more than a small time on feuds and friction, then it’s a sign of overstaffing  Drucker writes:

There is a reliable symptom of overstaffing.  If the senior people in the group—and of course the manager in particular – spend more than a small fraction of their time, maybe one-tenth, on “problems of human relations,” on feuds and frictions, on jurisdictional disputes and questions of cooperation, and so on, then the workforce is almost certainly too large.  People get into each other’s way.  People have become an impediment to performance, rather than the means thereto.  In a lean organization people have room to move without colliding with one another and can do their work without having to explain it all the time.

Malorganization
If you’re spending all your time in meetings, it’s a symptom of malorganization.  Drucker writes:

Another common time-waster is malorganization.  Its symptom is an excess of meetings.  Meetings are by definition a concession to deficient organization.  For one either meets or one works.  One cannot do both at the same time.  In an ideally designed structure (which in a changing world is of course only a dream), there would be no meetings.  Everybody would know what he needs to know to do his job.  Everyone would have the resources available to him to do his job.  We meet because people holding different jobs have to cooperate to get a specific task done.  But above all, meetings have to be the exception rather than the rule.  An organization in which everybody meets all the time is an organization in which no one gets anything done.  Wherever a time log shows the fatty degeneration of meeting – whenever, for instance, people in an organization find themselves in meetings a quarter of their time or more – there is time wasting malorganization.

Too Many Meetings Signal the Wrong Org Structure
Meetings should not be the main demand of a knowledge worker’s time.  Drucker writes:

As a rule, meetings should never be allowed to become the main demand on a knowledge worker’s time.  Too many meetings always bespeak poor structure of jobs and the wrong organizational components.   Too many meetings signify that work that should be in one component is spread over several jobs or several components.  They signify that responsibility is diffused and that information is not addressed to the people who need it.

Malfunction in Information
Bad information is another malfunction.  Drucker writes:

The last major time-waster is malfunction in information.  The administrator of a large hospital is plagued for years by telephone calls from doctors asking him to find a bed for one of their patients who should be hospitalized.  The admissions people “knew” that there was no empty bed.  Yet the administrator almost invariably found a few.  The admissions people simply were not informed immediately when a patient was discharged.  The floor nurse knew, of course, and so did the people in the front office who presented the bill to the departing patient.  This admissions people, however, got a “bed count” made every morning at 5:00 A.M. – while the great majority of patients were being sent home in midmorning after the doctors had made the rounds.  It did not take genius to put this right; all it needed was an extra carbon copy of the chit that goes from the floor nurse to the front office.

Time-Wasting Management Defects Can Take Long, Patient Work to Correct
Some management defects can take a long time to correct.  Drucker writes:

Time-wasting management defects such as overstaffing, malorganization, or malfunctioning information can sometimes be remedied fast.  At other times, it takes long, patient work to correct them.  The results of such work are, however, great – and especially in terms of time gained.

My Related Posts

• What Our Business Is, Will Be, and Should Be
• Productivity Objectives
• Objectives are Like Flight Plans
• How Much Profitability Do You Need
• Improving Job Satisfaction

Time is all you’ve got.  Spend it wisely.  It’s a limited resource. 

It’s also a unique resource.  There’s nothing like it.  You can’t buy more of it.  The best you can do is make the most of the time you have.   When you value your time, it forces you to prioritize more effectively.  You’re always making trade-offs.  When you value your time, you enjoy the time you spend. 

The moment is all you have.  When you realize that time is a limiting factor, you find ways to save time.  Rather than throw more time at problems, you find better techniques.

In The Essential Drucker: In One Volume the Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management [ESSENTIAL DRUCKER] , Peter Drucker writes about how time is the limiting factor.

Key Take Aways

Here are my key take aways:

• Time is the limiting factor.  You might have an endless supply of ideas or things you want to do.  Time is your limiting factor.  When you realize time is limited, you spend more time on what’s important to you and less time on what isn’t.   You also focus on improving your energy to make the most of the time you have.   When you know time is the limiting factor, you spend  it on the right things and make the most of each moment.  When you realize time is limited, you savor the moments you have. 
• Time is a unique resource.  It’s irreplacable.  You can’t make more of it.  There’s no substitute for it.
• Everything takes time.   Everything you do, uses up time.  Make time for what’s important.  Get rid of things that aren’t.  This includes making time for free time if that’s important to you.

Although Drucker doesn’t call it out, I think that it’s important to think of time in terms of what you are thinking, feeling and doing.  When you do this, you open up more options.  For example, there’s a technique called a Worry Break, where you limit the amount of time you spend worrying.

Time is the Limiting Factor

Drucker writes that time is the limiting factor:

“Effective people know that time is the limiting factor.  The output limits of any process are set by the scarcest resource.  In this process we call ‘accomplishment’, that resource is time.”

Time is Always in Exceedingly Short Supply

Drucker writes that time is always in short supply:

“Time is also a unique resource.  One cannot rent, hire, buy, or otherwise obtain more time.  The supply of time is totally inelastic.  No matter how high the demand, the supply will not increase.  There is not price for it and no marginal utility curve for it.  Moreover, time is totally perishable and cannot be stored.  Yesterday’s time is gone forever and will never come back.  Time is, therefore, always in exceedingly short supply.”

There is No Substitute for Time

Drucker writes that there’s no substitute for time:

“Time is totally irreplaceable.  Within limits we can substitute one resource for another, copper for aluminum, for instance.  We can substitute capital for human labor.  We can use more knowledge or more brawn.  But there is not substitute for time.”

Everything Requires Time

Drucker writes that everything requires time::

“Everything requires time.  It is the only truly universal condition.  All work takes place in time and uses up time.  Yet most people take for granted this unique, irreplaceable, and necessary resource.  Nothing else, perhaps, distinguishes effective executives as much as their tender loving care of time.”

My Related Posts

• Know Where Your Time Goes
• Consolidate Your Discretionary Time
• Manage Energy, Not Time

Photo by Martyn Wright.

Time boxing is a way to chunk up time and get results.  If you continuously miss windows of opportunity or spend all of your time in one area of your life at the expense of others, time boxing can be one of your best tools.   A time box is simply a limited set of time to accomplish a result.  Think of it as how much work can you get done in a given block of time.  I use it to organize my day, drive project results, make incremental progress on problems and spend time on the right buckets in my life.

Why Use Time Boxing
Using time as a constraint and forcing function for results is extremely effective:

• Avoid missing windows of opportunity.  Time’s a limited resource.  If you don’t treat it this way, you end up blowing project schedules, missing windows of opportunity, or doing too little, too late.
• Spread your results across key areas.   If you spend all of your time in one area of your life at the expense of another, you can use time boxes to allocate time for important areas (such as career, mind, body, social, spiritual … etc.)
• Prioritize more effectively.  If you know you only have three months for that project, you can be smarter about what you bite off that you can actually finish.
• Chunk up a problem.  Use time boxes to slice a problem down to size.  This works well if you have a daunting problem that seems too big to take on.  Timeboxes are also a more realistic way to deal with problems that spread over time.  If you can’t solve a problem in a single session, then figure out the right-size time chunks to throw at the problem.  How do you eat an Elephant?  One timebox at at time
• Deliver incremental results.   You can use a time box to show progressive results.  For example, rather than all-or-nothing thinking, use time boxing to make incremental progress on a problem.
• Increase focus.  Giving yourself dedicated time boxes to focus on a problem help you avoid task switching, and help you stay engaged on the problem.  If you find yourself wandering too much, then chunk your timebox down even further. See
• Increase motivation.  Make a game of it.  For example, how many sit ups can you do in 60 seconds?  Between splitting problems down to size, staying engaged on the problem and making a game of it, time boxing is a sure-fire way to build momentum and results.
• Improve your effectiveness and efficiency.  use time boxing to tune your results.  Using a time box can help you identify areas to improve as well as refine your approach.  If you’re not getting enough done within your timebox, experiment with different approaches, while you tune your effectiveness and efficiency.
• Version your results.  It can be very liberating if you think in terms of revisiting a problem over a period of time, versus trying to get it all right up front.
• Defeat analysis paralysis.  Analysis paralysis can be the worst enemy of results.  Use a time box to switch gears from think mode to execution.

Summary of Steps
Here’s some prescriptive guidance for creating and using time boxes effectively:

• Step 1.  Identify candidate areas for time boxing.
• Step 2.  Identify your objectives.
• Step 3.  Identify the appropriate time box.
• Step 4.  Execute results within your time box.
• Step 5.  Evaluate and adapt.

Step 1. Identify candidate areas for time boxing.

Identify candidates for time boxing.  This could be anything from work projects to personal projects.  Personally, I’ve found it the most effective to start with something small, such as starting a new exercise program.  I’ve also found it effective to use it to tackle my worst time bandits (any area where I lose a bunch of time, with either little ROI or at the expense of another area.)

Step 2.  Identify your objectives.
In this step, ask yourself what you need to accomplish with time boxing.  Examples include:

• Meet a deadline.
• Show incremental results.
• Make incremental progress on a tough problem.
• Build momentum.

Step 3.  Identify the appropriate time box.
In this step, figure out what a right-sized time box would be.  For example, you might have a project due in three weeks.  Within that three week time box, you might decide that if you allocate 2 hours a day, you’ll produce effective results.

The right-sized time box largely depends on what you determined in Step 1.  You might need to grow or shrink your time box depending on whether you’re trying to build momentum, show results or just make progress on a problem.
Step 4.  Execute results within your time box.
Execute within your timebox and stop when you run out of time.  This can be tough at first because you might be on a roll.  This can be really tough if you are used to doing things until they are done.  What you’re learning at this step is how to stay completely focused, how to treat time as a limited resource, and how to tune your results.  You’re also learning how to make time boxes effective for you.

Start with your time box as a baseline so you can evaluate your results.  The worst mistake is to give yourself an hour for results, spend two hours, and then say what a great job you did in your one hour timebox.  Instead, do the hour, then figure out whether you need longer time boxes or if your approach needs to change.
Step 5.  Evaluate and adapt.
If it’s not working, change your approach.   Using time boxing is one of the most effective ways to experiment with different techniques to find the most efficient.

Examples of Effective Timeboxing
Here’s some examples of putting timeboxes into practice:

• Software development.  Because our teams within patterns & practices do iterative and incremental development, we make heavy use of time boxing.  For example, within a two-week iteration, how much value can we deliver?
• Feed reading.  Give yourself a 10 minute window and see how many useful feeds you can read.  See how you tune your feed reading skills, including choice of reader, how you prioritize, and how you choose posts to read, as well as what links to follow.  You might choose to factor your exploratory, pleasure feed reading from your personal and professional development feed reading.
• Email.  Use time to help you outsmart your inbox.  For example, if you allocate 30 minutes for your email, but you’re falling behind, instead of throwing more time at the problem, experiment with different approaches.
• Time bandits.  Set limits on how much time you’ll throw at your worst time sinks.  For example, do you spend too much time in meetings?  Do you spend too much time stuck in analysis paralysis and not enough time in execution?  Tackle your time-bandits with some hard limits.   

My Related Posts

• Timeboxes, Rhythm, and Incremental Value
• 30 Day Improvement Sprints
• Little Steps for Little Feet
• Little Steps for Meetings
• Little Steps for Housework
• Rituals for Results