During a poignant scene in Tennessee Williams’ play, “Sweet Bird of Youth,” the leading character faces with dread the fact that his life is passing by rapidly. He sees all the opportunities he has let slip by and realizes they will never return. “Time is the enemy of us all,” he declares.
Failure to recognize that time is inescapably a limited, fixed resource constitutes an ever-present threat to career achievements. This a reality that must be dealt with if success is to be won.
In his book, “How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life,” Alan Lakein puts it on the line: “Time is life. It is your life, but to master time is to master your life and make the most of it.”
Each of us has exactly 168 hours a week – 8,736 a year – to accomplish all we will ever get done.
The more acute the careerist’s sense of the passage of time, the greater his chances of success. It is rare to find a successful careerist who is not driven by a sense of urgency.
Urgency Is Essential To Your Success
Urgency is an essential ingredient, but it has to be controlled. It can drive us to run about in a frenzy, working away at one project for a few minutes only to drop it and dash off to another. That’s a sure way to burn up a lot of energy and accomplish very little.
Urgency can be a focused force, compelling us to organize our work, to set deadlines and meet them, to be energized and to keep pushing to achieve the next step up the ladder for more responsibility and greater use of our abilities.
Controlled, healthy urgency requires us to account for the way we use this limited resource. Alibis not accepted.
It is helpful to think of each day as being made up of 48 chips, each worth 30 minutes. We can bet them on life as we see fit. We can place them on work, study, family, play, self-pity, confidence, or time wasted. At the end of each day, we have to take an inventory of our wins and losses. If we have not made more good bets than bad on how we use our time, sooner or later we break our personal life bank.
Time experts have produced scores of books and videos on time management. Selected ones ought to be in the library of every ambitious careerist. But if we are not careful, we can get mired down in a swamp of how-to-do-it advice that becomes a great waste of time and an easy excuse to replace urgency with procrastination.
The idea of time is truly awesome, but the concept of what to do about it is simple, if we discipline ourselves to act.
In reality, the use of time does not require a few big, dramatic, earth-shattering, fork-of-the-road decisions.
How To Maximize Your Use Of Time
The way we use our time is determined by hundreds of choices – most of them little decisions – we make each day, week, month and year about what to do and when to do it.
The key for meaningful action to maximize our utilization of time (i.e., success) is to live by a simple formula.
DO
DO IT
DO IT NOW
“Do” means be active, always moving to accomplish the next step toward one of our goals.
“Do it” means act on specifics that relate to the goal on which we are working.
“Do it now” means act now on a specific step. If common sense calls for a delay on one project, move on immediately to act on another goal.
Time can be an alluring seductress. It seems to offer a bed of comfort to be enjoyed at one’s own pace with no due-bill to be paid sooner or later. Know time for what it is, a perishable resource with a finite shelf life. Every day, in every way, each of us uses up some of our potential.
Use it or lose it!
I wish you great success in the world of work.
Ramon Greenwood
Senior Career Counselor, Common Sense At Work
Ramon…thanks for the “timeless” reminder on how to succeed! Your articles always give me that little kick in the butt to do what needs to be done…right now! Keep it coming!
My father taught me a trick to avoid procrastination and make the most of time when I was in high school. I rang a small bell on my desk for every page of a report written. Hearing the ringing, he would shout a “good job” from our living room. The tiny goal was accomplished and allowing myself some praise along the way made it much easier to face a five or ten page homework assignment. I use a similar technique in my job today. I start each day by making a list of the tasks (big and small) I would like to accomplish and cross them off when completed. It may sound silly, but it is very rewarding to slowly accomplish a long list of tasks and my focus on the list helps make productive use of limited time!