So much to do, not enough time

The words of my dear friend (let us call her Mary) stayed with me. She was one of the speakers at our Africa Women’s Leadership Summit and the topic we gave her was “Achieving more using little”.

As Mary took us through her talk, her words, “I budget my time more than I budget my money” caught my attention. Wow, I thought no wonder she has beaten the odds and achieved a lot in a short span of time.

Ed Mylett in his book The Power of One More: The Ultimate Guide to Happiness and Success confirms Mary’s practice when he observes that “time is more valuable than money”.

According to Ed, money is a resource we can replenish. However, we cannot add more time to our lives. Indeed, it is safe to conclude that our time is finite. No matter how much we desire to get back the past 10 months of this year, we cannot. 

I believe this is what management guru Peter Drucker meant when he said, “Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.”

Like Mary, we all need to come to a place where we can effectively budget our time because when we take care of the minutes, the 24 hours we all receive daily will be accounted for.

I wish I would say in the fourth decade of my life I manage time as well as I did in the last decade. Instead, I have to keep Mary’s words at the forefront as I go back to the drawing board and determine that I will grow to be a good steward of time like she is.

I am learning to appreciate the fact that what used to take me days to accomplish can be done in less time when I use technology that this century has put at our disposal. 

Going back to the basics and beginning my week with a clear plan of action is a strategy I am currently implementing. 

I prefer weekly planning to daily planning because a week gives me a better insight into what lies ahead.

In addition, weekly planning allows me to leverage my days and make time for self-care since I cannot pour from an empty cup and self-care is not selfish at all.

However, for all this to be effective, I need clarity on what my priorities for each season are. 

I ensure that as I juggle the balls of life, I do not drop those that can shutter. I am also learning that collaboration is the new currency for success. The words of Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:23-24 that, “Although I have the right to do anything not everything is beneficial or constructive” are also a great guide as I say no and not feel guilty about my responses.

Finally, to enable me to have my time budget, I am drawing from Stephen Covey’s wisdom to always “put first things first”. 

This requires that I make use of the time management matrix he refers to. A summary of this matrix is that our activities are mostly divided into four quadrants. Quadrant 1 has activities that are urgent and important. People who choose to operate from this quadrant mostly deal with crises, deadlines or last-minute activities. On the contrary, those who opt from the Quadrant 2 deal with activities that are not urgent but are important.

This is where we all should operate from. Activities in this quadrant include planning for success, self-care and preventing burnout, building relationships and looking for new opportunities. Quadrant 3 are those who opt for activities that are urgent and not important while Quadrant 4 are those who focus on trivial things or time wasters that keep one busy but not productive.

As we plan for the coming year, I hope you will join me as we determine that we will be Quadrant 2 leaders. That we will keep the quote “a leader is one who knows the way, goes the way and shows the way” in mind as we steward those in our folds.

I reckon that for us to be leaders that show the way we need to begin by identifying the key roles we will be playing. Next, we will set clear goals for each of those roles and have an accountability partner to hold us to our promises. If you want me to be an accountability partner for you, write to me and let us make your desire come to fruition.