How to manage time effectively - its all about priorities!

How to manage time effectively - its all about priorities! How to manage time effectively its all about priorities! Image Source: Unsplash / Photography: Angelina LitvinWHEN we speak about how to manage time effectively, it’s important to deal in precise definitions, and deconstruct some phrases and terms that have become cliches. Such as ‘time management’!If  time management was the sole ingredient of financial success, then every mother of young children would be a multi-millionaire.What is a more potent measure of business success is a demonstrable ability to get more from the time that’s available by managing priorities, rather than time. This is not time-management, but a matter of  how to manage time effectively, about ensuring that time is allocated to the things that matter. It is  not managing time.Sir Richard Branson has the same 24 hours as you and I, and yet he seems to get more from time. Ditto, Warren Buffett.The reason why is that they are better at managing priorities than most other people, and, unlike young mums, have the freedom to set priorities and pursue them.In other words, Branson and Buffett decide what is important to them in terms of their business and their life goals, and go after those things as a matter of priority.Stephen Covey’s fantastic   book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, is very illuminating on this point.Check Price In this book, Covey conjures the image of a week as the perfect patch in the fabric of life. It’s a lovely analogy, which makes me imagine a series of patchwork quilts, each made up of 52 identically sized but completely different patches, representing one year.He writes that the secret of being truly effective and successful is to make each week count. Covey also sets out three steps towards this end.Decide your priorities and plan the week, each week, before the week begins.Organize and execute around those prioritiesReview and repeat.With all this in mind, take  a look at my ‘Coffee With Colm’ video on time-management, why I believe it doesn’t work, and ideas for an alternative approach.Vi deo Source: Colm O’BrienIn my book  Feeding Johnny â€" How to Build a Business Despite the Roadblocks, I explore these ideas further in a section entitled ‘Time Management Doesn’t Work’. They are inspired by our experiences following the (spectacular) failure of our first business, when it looked like our new business, Carambola, had made a breakthrough.Check Price Some people may think that I may be suggesting that life is too random to plan anything, but I must emphatically burst that particular bubble. Planning is essential. It is trying to manage time itself that’s impossible.Here’s a simple exercise. Stop all of the watches, clocks and timepieces in your home or office for a period of time, say around 15 minutes, and then restart them. Now, what time is it? It is not the time that it says on the clock. No, in reality, it’s 15 minutes later than what your timepieces are displaying. Time marches on, inexorably. You can’t ‘manage’ time itself.It was during that busy breakthrough period for Carambola that I began to study carefully the writings of Stephen Covey. If you follow up on this, and I believe you should, look out for Covey’s ‘Quadrant Two Living’ concept and his ‘Big Rocks’ theory.With these concepts Covey argues that it’s important to first decide what’s important in our lives, and then prioritise the activities that give us the desired results in those key areas.You then schedule time for those activities first each week, often sacrificing the less important activities. When it comes to work life balance and managing your day, remember Covey’s simple instruction:“Organise and execute around priorities.”