Time – does not wait for anybody

by Satish Nair
(Jodhpur, India)

We see people, who often complain that they have lot of work to do, which cannot be done since they have constraints of time. The reason why it could not be achieved and if they are not able to overcome from such hindrances, they attract disfavor from all the people around them, their bosses and their subordinates. Let us see whether there is any remedy for this, of course, there are:

1. List down the activities to do in a chronological order

2. List down the activities, in order like VERY URGENT, URGENT, MODERATELY URGENT and NOT AT ALL URGENT.

3. Analyze the constrictions, which put obstacles and desist from taking up and try to avoid those things, reasons may be, procrastination, feeling shame to say no when some crafty people inflict their jobs on us, afraid of mistakes, laziness, habit to indulge in unwanted unproductive activities, our inability to keep away the people, who often try to intervene with their problems etc. etc.

Let us try to note down the time spent in hours, in a particular day, then we could know about the time we spent on the activities on that day, which are not contributing to the productivity, silly or unwanted tasks. If we avoid the wastage of time by keeping away the undesirable actions, it could have been done appropriately when we have the time. Somebody says, “I only spend one hour for watching the TV and I do not think this makes much difference”, however when asked him to calculate the hours he spent before TV, after the calculation, he surprised to note that daily one hour watching TV for say 365 days in a year i.e. 15 days (consider 24 hours in a day), the time he spent before the idiot box is 15 long days. When he tries to find out the necessity in spending this much time before TV, whether this is desirable, this does not mean that watching good and valuable programmes is to be averted at all.

We also hear some older people complain that they did not spend their time appropriately in their younger days, what is the benefit in complaining now, the time did not spent is the time wasted. We know the time does not wait for anybody, without doing the things in time and procrastinate it for future is very piteous habit and it is hapless to recall our own habits in the past. It was not done, when it could have been done and complaining for the merit of complaining is not desirable.

The prominent economist Louis E Boon once said that “I am going to take up the time management lesson seriously, however I have to spare time to learn it, but there is only 24 hours to spend for all other activities, if at all I will be able to spare that much time, I will take up those lessons”.