Self-Discipline and Time Management

 

   “If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self.” 

—NAPOLEON HILL

   There is perhaps no area of your life in which self-discipline is more important than in the way you manage your time. Time management is a core discipline that largely determines the quality of your life. As Peter Drucker said, “You cannot manage time; you can only manage yourself.”

Time management is really life management, personal management, management of yourself rather than of time or circumstances.

Time is perishable; it cannot be saved. Time is irreplaceable; nothing else will do. Time is irretrievable; once it is gone or wasted, you can never get it back. Finally, time is indispensable, especially for accomplishments of any kind. All achievement, all results, all success requires time.

 You Can’t “Save” Time

The fact is that you cannot save time; you can only spend it differently. You can only reallocate your time usage from areas of low value to areas of high value. Herein lies the key to success, and the requirement for self-discipline.

Time management is the ability to choose the sequence of events. By exerting your self-discipline with regard to time, you can choose what to do first, second, and not at all. And you are always free to choose.

You require tremendous self-discipline to overcome the procrastination and delay that holds most people back from great success. A native Indian once told me that “procrastination is the thief of dreams.”

The Pareto Principle, the 80/20 rule, says that 20 percent of the things you do account for 80

percentof the value of what you accomplish. This means that 80 percent of what you do is worth 20

percent or less of the value of what you accomplish.

 Assess the True Value of Everything You Do

Some things you do are five times and even ten times more valuable than other things, even though they take the same number of minutes and hours. The most important things you do—the top 20

percent—are usually big, difficult, and daunting. In contrast, the 80 percent of things that you do that make little or no difference to your life are usually fun, easy, and enjoyable.

 Personal Strategic Planning

In corporate strategic planning, the main focus is on increasing the “return on equity.” Equity in a business is defined as the amount of money invested in the business by the owners (aside from debt and money borrowed). The purpose of strategic planning is to find ways to organize and reorganize the business in such a way that the company is achieving a higher rate of return on this equity than it would be in the absence of the planning process.Companies invest financial capital, but individuals invest “human capital.” Companies deploy financial assets, but your most vital assets are your mental, emotional, and physical energies. How you invest them determines your entire quality of life.

In personal strategic planning, your goal is to get the highest “return on energy” from your activities. Ken Blanchard refers to this as getting the highest “return on life.”

 Think Before You Act

Before you commit to any time-consuming activity, you must always ask, “Is this the very best use of my time?”

Lack of self-discipline in time management leads people to procrastinate their top tasks continually, causing them to spend more and more time on tasks of low or no value. And whateveryou do repeatedly eventually becomes a habit.

 Priorities VS Posteriorities

Setting priorities requires setting posteriorities as well. A priority is something that you do more of and sooner, whereas a posteriority is something you do less of or later. You are probably already overwhelmed with too much to do and too little time. Because of this, for you to embark on a new task, you must discontinue an old task. Getting into something new requires getting out of another activity. Before you commit to a new undertaking, ask yourself, “What am I going to stop doing so that I have enough time to work on this new task?”

Go through your life regularly and practice “creative abandonment”: Consciously determine the activities that you are going to discontinue so that you have more time to spend on those tasks that can really make a difference to your future.Identify the Consequences

One of the most important words in developing the discipline of time management is “consequences.”

Something is important to the degree that it has serious potential consequences for completion or noncompletion. A task or activity is unimportant to the degree that it does not matter if it is done or not.

Managing Your Time

There is a simple time management system that you can use to overcome procrastination. It requires self-discipline, willpower, and personal organization, but the payoff is huge. When you use this system, you can double or even triple your productivity, performance, output, and income.

Before you begin each day, start by making a list of everything you have to do that day. The best time to make this list is the evening before, at the end of the workday, so that your subconscious mind can work on your list of activities while you sleep. You will often wake up with ideas and insights for how to more effectively complete the tasks of the day.

Then apply the A B C D E Method to your list:

• A = “Must do”—Serious consequences for noncompletion;

• B = “Should do”—Mild consequences for doing or not doing; • C = “Nice to do”—No consequences whether you do it or not; • D = “Delegate”—Everything you possibly can to free up more time for those things that only you can do;

• E = “Eliminate”—Discontinue all tasks and activities that are no longer essential to your work and to achieving your goals.

 From the book NO EXCUSE by Brian tracy