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.

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.

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What are the keys to effective time management?  How do successful people manage their time?  They log and analyze their time.  They use deadlines.  They know that time is the scarcest resource.  They master their own time management to improve their contribution and effectiveness.  In The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management (Collins Business Essentials), Peter F. Drucker writes that you should “know thy time.”

Log and Analyze Your Time
Drucker writes that effective people perpetually work on their time management:

And all effective people work on their time management perpetually.  They not only keep a continuing log and analyze it periodically; they set themselves deadlines for the important activities, based on their judgment of their discretionary time.

Urgent and Unpleasant Lists
Drucker shares an example about using lists with deadlines for urgent and unpleasant tasks:

One highly effective man I know keeps two such lists – one of the urgent and one of the unpleasant things that have to be done – each with a deadline.  When he finds his deadlines slipping, he knows his time is again getting away from him.

Time is the Scarcest Resource
Drucker writes that time is the scarcest resource, but it’s also easy to analyze and improve:

Time is the scarcest resource, and unless it is managed, nothing else can be managed.  The analysis of one’s time, moreover, is the one easily accessible and yet systematic way to analyze one’s work and to think through what really matters in it.

Everyone Can Follow “Know Thy Time”
Drucker writes that the path to contribution and effectiveness is knowing how you spend your time:

“Know thyself,” the old prescription for wisdom, is almost impossibly difficult for mortal men.  But everyone can follow the injunction “Know thy time” if he or she wants to, and be well on the road toward contribution and effectiveness.

Key Take Aways
Here’s my key take aways:

• Time is the scarcest resource.  You can’t make more time.  You have what you got.   Make the most of it.
• Log and analyze your time.  A key to managing your time effectively is knowing where it goes.
• Consider keeping lists of deadlines for urgent and unpleasant tasks.  If you find your deadlines keep slipping, then you need to improve how you’re managing time.
• Effective people perpetually work on their time management.  Effective people make it a habit to work at improving their time management.

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To effectively manage your time, you first need to know where it goes.  Don’t rely on your memory.  The problem is you’ll think you spend time where you should spend your time.  Your memory will fool you.  In The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management (Collins Business Essentials), Peter F. Drucker writes about logging your time rather than relying on memory.

Key Take Aways
Here’s my key take aways:

• To manage your time, you need to know where it goes.  In order to manage your time effectively, you first need to know where your time actually goes.
• Keep a time record.  The only way to know where you spend your time is to log it.
• Your memory is wrong.  Your memory tells you you spend your time where you think you should spend your time. 

Don’t Rely on Your Memory to Know How Much Time You Spend
Drucker writes don’t rely on your memory to know where your time goes:

Man is ill-equipped to manage his time.  Even in total darkness, most people retain their sense of space.  But even with the lights on, a few hours in a sealed room render most people incapable of estimating how much time has elapsed.  They are as likely to underrate grossly the time spent in the room as to overrate it grossly.  If we rely on our memory, therefore, we do not know how much time has been spent.

Record Your Time and Test Your Memory
Drucker suggests logging your time and testing your memory:

I sometimes ask executives who pride themselves on their memory to put down their guesses as to how they spend their own time.  Then I lock these guesses away for a few weeks or months.  In the meantime, the executives run an actual time record on themselves.  There is never much resemblance between the way these people thought they used their time and their actual records.

You Think You Spend Time Where You Should Spend Your Time
According to Drucker, we fool ourselves on where we actually spend our time:

One company chairman was absolutely certain that he divided his time roughly into three parts.  One third he thought he was spending with his senior men.  One-third he thought he spent with his important customers.  And one-third he thought was devoted to community activities.  The actual record of his activities over six weeks brought out clearly that he spent almost no time in any of these areas.  There were the tasks on which he knew he should spend time – and therefore memory, obligingly as usual, told him that they were the tasks on which he actually spent most of his hours as a kind of dispatcher, keeping track of orders from customers he personally knew, and bothering the plant with telephone calls about them.  Most of those orders were going through all right anyhow and his intervention could only delay them.  But when his secretary first came in with the time record, he did not believe her.  It took two or three more time logs to convince him that the record, rather than his memory, had to be trusted when it came to the use of time.

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Key Take Aways
Here’s my key take aways:

• Figure out how much discretionary time you have.   Baseline your schedule to figure out what time is available that you can move around.  The goal is to batch your discretionary time together so that you have bigger blocks of consecutive work time.
• Consolidate your operating work for Mondays and Fridays.  Batch your meetings, reviews, and administrative tasks to Monday and Friday mornings.
• Use your power hours on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays for your high priority work.  Focus on moving your big rocks on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.
• Work from home one day a week.  Consider working at home to consolidate your discretionary time.

I’ve analyzed and tested lots of time management approaches, but this I really like Drucker’s prescriptive guidance.  I like the idea of batching administrative work to Mondays and Fridays, and consolidating your discretionary time.

How Much Time is Available for Your Contributions?
Drucker writes that effective people figure out how much discretionary time they have:

The executive who records and analyzes his time and then attempts to manage it can determine how much he has for his important tasks.  How much time is there that is “discretionary,” that is, available for the big tasks that will really make a contribution?  It is not going to be a great deal, no matter how ruthlessly the knowledge worker prunes time-wasters.

The Higher Up You Go, the Less Time Spent on Contribution
According to Drucker, the higher up you go, the less time you spend on contribution:

The higher up a knowledge worker, the larger will be the proportion of time that is not under his control and yet not spent on contribution.  The larger the organization, the more time will be needed just to keep the organization together and running, rather than to make it function and produce.

Consolidate Your Discretionary Time
According to Drucker, effective people consolidate their discretionary time:

The effective people therefore knows that he has to consolidate his discretionary time.  He knows that he needs large chunks of time and that small driblets are not time at all.  Even one-quarter of the working day, if consolidated in large time units, is usually enough to get the important things done.  But even three-quarters of the working day are useless if it is only available as fifteen minutes or half an hour there.  The final step in time management is therefore to consolidate the time that record and analysis show as normally available and under the executive’s control.

Work at Home One Day a Week
Drucker writes that one approach to consolidate time is to work at home one day a week:

There are a good many ways of doing this.  Some people, usually senior managers, work at home one day a week; this is a particularly common method of time consolidation for editors or research scientists.

Schedule All the Operating Work for Monday and Friday
Drucker writes that another approach is to batch your operating work for Mondays and Fridays:

Others schedule all the operating work – the meetings, reviews, problem sessions, and so on – for two days a week, for example, Monday and Friday, and set aside the mornings of the remaining days for consistent, continuing work on major issues.

How Not To Consolidate Discretionary Time
Don’t let your little rocks get in the way of the big rocks.  Drucker writes:

But the method by which one consolidates one’s discretionary time is far less important than the approach.  Most people tackle the job by trying to push the secondary, the less productive matters together, thus clearing, so to speak, a free space between them.  This does not lead very far, however.  One still gives priority in one’s mind and in one’s schedule to the less important things, the things that have to be done even though they contribute little.  As a result, any new time pressure is likely to be satisfied at the expense of the discretionary time and of the work that should be done in it.  Within a few days or weeks, the entire discretionary time will then be gone again, nibbled away by new crisis, new immediate, new trivia.

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