On Time Management

Introduction Like plethora of time management books , ideas and principles being marketed, I hereby present one of my version on time management. The ideas I have presented here, were being thought,worked and experimented for the past two years. Like I say, there are no orignal ideas but orignal copies, these ideas are too not wholly mine,but borrowed from that source or these source. But these synthesis of various ideas have worked for me,and I suppose it may work for you. I am a philosopher( a person who uses too much of his mind or who over-analyzes things). And therefore my discourse on time management starts with why, with that I start my discourse. Why Time management ? The development of human kind, has not given us more time ,but it has taken our time. Never before in the history, men is so liberated. It can do manything, and this many thing has become a two edge sword - many thing in work and many thing in recreation . And to do it , in a fixed value call time. The world consist of two kinds of people - maximizer and satisfier. Maximizer tends to maximize , and satisfier is happy with what they have. Now, this Time management thing are for maximizer, those who want to do more things in their life, for satisfier, this is bull shit. On what we do ? Now those who are reading it, I may say that they must be a knowledge worker. A knowledge worker is different from a manual labour. A knowledge worker work is not a physical work but a mental work. And for me it should not be called a work at all. The work he do has got tangible work, the work component that you see constitute only a fraction of his total effort, most of his work is involve in collecting data, understanding, thinking and then execution. So the work should be called as a project. This can be generalized to all the work we do in the modern society from planning holiday(choosing holiday on net, discussing , thinking) to getting our car for repair (when to give, which ). How to manage projects ? I am not a believer of any time management ideas which relies on scribbling on papers, on computers ,or on PDA. Cause the problem with them is they overlook chaos, and hence need to be updated every time. These so called to-do list or priority list believes in linear view of time. For example At time t-1 , I made a to-do list or priority list, at time t-2 ,after completing task A, I have to again redraw my priority list, cause the information I get after working in project A, makes many other projects redundant.

What I propose is to take one project at a time, and forget about other project , or don’t think that other project exist. It has got many upside More focus on the current project, and less tension of the future project because you have not made them. It will also eliminate multi tasking ,as you wont vacillate between one project to other. Flexibility in choosing next project based on what information you have got after completing the project "As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself." - Leonardo da Vinci

1.5 Viewing your 24 hours Some say, 11 players are needed to make a cricket team, some say , we need 6 batsmen , 4 bowlers and a wicket-keeper to make a good "test" cricket team. The idea is to look 24 hours as 24 hours or see them based on importance of each hour in the daily day.i look a single day, as a metaphor of life Early morning represents our childhood Morning represents our youth Noon represents our mid-life crisis And evening represents our prime And night is the time to retire. Most people waste their childhood and youth, and hence have a troubled life. As one says "morning shows the day", and I really believe that it is important to use morning for maximum advantage. Not only one is fresh during the morning but also the quiteness in the morning is quintessence. Some people will say , they are night person and would love to work at night, the problem with the statement is that our body is a morning person. Noon , I have labeled it a time of middle age crisis. The time when our body is programmed to slop. A period of lethargy , a period of siesta , the most unproductive part of the day, and it should be reserved for the most unproductive task ,like cleaning the work place or collecting information, the passive jobs.

1.6 How to get about the work ? 'Not excellence. Perfection. You aim for perfection, you will attain excellence. If you aim for excellence, you will go lower.' - J R D Tata

As a knowledge worker we have to deal with projects with no clear cut boundaries. So it becomes tough to know when the work is complete. Consider making a project report, and there would always be n number of things that needed to be done , the things always seems to be incomplete. Also, the other problem is of striving for excellence, to make one work excellent. It is what makes work motivation go down spiral, as there is nothing called excellence. It is a wild goose chase, a fantasy that is doomed to die. What one can only do is strive for perfection, with a bounded time. Not only , it will breed urgency but also motivate one towards perfection , cause perfection is neurotic A sense of urgency for me is the key for making the task complete, without focus and emergency it is easier to slip in mindless details and after sometime one find himself far away from the shore . Doing Knowledge project is like picking flowers from the garden, it is easy to get lost in the beautifulness of the garden unless you are determined what flower you have to pick. "I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do" - Leonardo da vinci

1.7 Demanding from the day Modern world makes instant celebrity, our life looks pointless. What we are doing . No mercedes, No holiday at carribean, no big and lavish parties. And what is our job, what intellectual describe as soul destroying activity. What is this I am doing with my life.

Well, to make my point, I am just telling that, there are three evils in this world Money Fame Success And then someone says, whats the point of living , if one should not strive for them. And I will say, we have lived on this earth, we humans have lived in this world for the past 2 million years, not wishing them. It is only the modern man who have created this devices, to motivate people. What is in work is this, in sort… IT IS THE FLOW There is nothing that gives man more pleasure then loosing his consciousness, loosing himself to the flow of the world, hence we have Alcohol

Drugs Sex Work/Projects Sorry Work/Project Well here is the whole point, an artist love painting because he looses himself in the flow, a cricket loves cricket because of the flow he get, the flow experience, and this is his main importance of pursuing this activity. So we find a bankrupt and happy artist, cricketer who knows nothing except playing cricket and knows his life is not going to better, but he plays because of the flow experience he gets. The point is, all this Time management is to make your day a flow experience, we manage time so we don’t know it at the end of the day, you should come home and say " where all the time has gone"

1.8 There are some projects that cant be finished in one day There are some projects that cant be finised in one day or one year, or what one say some improvement that can not be completed in one year, all you can do is to try and try, to move the big wheel. one important thing in life that is rarely taught in class and which is only taught in real life is patience and its evil sister "frustation", patience is what optimistic see, and frustation what a pessimistic see. And the important thing is , some project when we are struck, (as a knowledge worker) , we got to have patience in trying to solve it,and I think this is an important reason for variety of project failure, lack of understanding of "patience" He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year - Leonardo da vinci

1.9 Attire and Music What is inside shows outside, and what we wear outside changes inside. It is this, a good dress up will help you not to sleep and music will always keep you upbeat. Buy IPOD nano, will help you to keep stress at bay, and wear good attire, will help to keep sleep at bay and also keep your confidence up. And also bath is very important , make sure you do that.

1.10 A note on Inertia "Half of the work is to get it started"

The hardest part in a day is to wake up, The hardest part in the project is to get it started, This is the breakup of my work , on how I carry on my work work

Staring at work

Doing the work

Report

20

2

bathing

1 hour

10 minutes

It is just, staring takes so much time out of , the blody inertia… I have carved out the following reasons, which our mind make to keep us in the inertia Ontological question :- the usefulness of the work Existential question :- why to do it Hedonistic argument :- Pleasure is what I seek, sleeping is the utmost pleasure I can get And the problem is , at that state on the bed, I wholeheartedly agree with them. Inertia can not be beaten, except creating more pleasure state that you are in, or by potraying more painful state then the pleasure you are in. Here are some thing you can do to counter inertia Identifying that you are in inertia Knowing that

1.11 Distributing project into small projects "A truck is a big machine or an assembling of smaller machine , it is your point of view" Together we stand , divided we fall, and I guess this is what happens with project. When a project is looked in a cohesive manner , it looks intimidating and huge. And when we differentiate it, it all falls down. This is the skill one will need to develop, in analyzing the project you are taking. An ability to analyze the work. And analyze means breaking things into pieces and knowing how one effect the other, gaining the understanding of the work.

1.12 Some Project you have to complete it now "I never used my shotgun, I want to keep it unspoiled, so when the bandits attack me, I shot at them, only to find it locked"- policeman , after being shoot by the bandit (excerpt from joke books retrieved from hell )

If you start postponing your dreams, the chances are that it will never come. And I guess , it is the reason for some people are savers and whole life they spend saving, cause they forgot how to spend it. Some projects, like holidaying, starting a writing career, should be start from now, till it become a memory. And life is so cruel, that it will always give you enough reasons to postpone things. BE WARY.

1.13 the toughest thing in the project It is the start and the end, in between you get a cozy ride