Can time be actually managed?

Tuesday, 1 April 2014 01:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

It is very unfortunate that the UNHCR resolution and the subsequent activities that the media has been reporting will definitely have an impact to the overall competitiveness of the country. A point that the world forgets to note is that Sri Lanka lost over 200 billion dollars due to the war on tourism, FDI and the cost of managing containing one of the most ruthless terror organisations that the world has seen. But post-2009 Sri Lanka’s rating has increased from 87 to 51, which just indicates the pent-up economic growth that the country unleashed. But now the country will have to manage the ramifications from the development post-Geneva. Public sector – market drive Given that Sri Lanka has emerged from a war of almost 30 years, an accepted fact is that the procedure in the public sector needs to be revamped to the new dynamics of the modern world so that we can be market-driven. Post-2009 we have seen how the processes have improved drastically on taxation and Customs, to name a few. The point is that when process is market-driven, the management of time by the private sector will be easier given that the procedures become customer-friendly. Given this background, let me share the best practices of time management and if it actually can be managed.

The reality The reality of time management is that be it a president of a country, a CEO or just an executive of a company, all are challenged with pressure on time. Research reveals that the many have lost control of their sense of time that they have sold their time to sleeping time. If one has sold time, then in effect you have sold yourself to reality of the world rather than managing it. Time management in my view is work management and this in turn relates to self management. How it works Apparently, self management is determined by our inner constitution with the physical body being only a vehicle carrying our inner personality, which is constituted of the mind and the intellect. The mind can reason and judge but it’s our intellect that makes us decide our behaviour. If one is to illustrate this, a diabetic person may be fond of sweets. His mind wants it but his intellect reasons and rejects it. Such is the power of intellect in modulating our behaviour. It is said that it is our intellect that governs our self management. No educational institution in the world is designed to develop the intellect. Schools and universities provide mere knowledge and intelligence. An intellect is developed by oneself as opposed to intelligence acquired from teachers and textbooks. No time management is possible to my mind unless one has developed one’s intellect. Time management Time management is in essence derived from our intellect. The logic being if you want to practice good time management what is required is accurate backward planning. Backward planning is fixing the goal you wish to achieve in life and programming your efforts backwards. Hence, if one wants to be a billionaire, a top CEO or top policy maker, that must be determined in the outset. There after we must work back the time that is required to achieve that end. This will include assessing one’s capacity to reach the target and one has to stretch a little which means that goal which again calls for a sharp intellect. This will include analysing the contributory factors necessary to achieve the set goal and the resources required. For instance for a target to be achieved at say 35 years, one needs to plan the first 20 years, the next 10 years, this year, month, week and today. One must take into consideration all possibilities and do this planning. If this is done with a clear focus, we cannot go wrong in time management. This sure makes sense and is one of the best lessons we can learn on time management.

Conclusion To summarise, time management is not looking at what I have to do today, next month or next year. In essence, time management is self management. Self management involves the building of strong intellect to balance the equation and asking what you want to achieve and then architecturing what needs to be done to achieve that end. The million dollar question is: Do we know what we want in life? (The author is a Board Director in the private and public sector and was recently awarded the Outstanding Leadership Award by the Association of Business/World Education Congress. Writing is a hobby he pursues and no link to the organisations he serves in Sri Lanka or internationally.)