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Concepts of Time
Management
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Most of us would be familiar with the
words of the Fairy Godmother in the fairy tale Cinderella:
“Now go on and enjoy yourself, dance to your heart’s content and
win the Prince’s heart. But remember, you have to be back before the
clock strikes midnight.”
It’s these words that probably first made us aware of the value of
time. We sympathized with Cinderella when her splendid gown and
other finery turned into rags at the stroke of midnight. This
becomes our first acquaintance with the villain Time!
But is time really such a villain that should always be painted in
black? We have heard the proverb that says, “there are no wounds
that time cannot heal.”
Here, of course, we get the image of a gentle old woman who comes
hobbling up to us with a pitcher full of balm and gentle fingers to
soothe away our pains and sorrows.
But that’s enough! This book was not written to eulogize time. There
is no need of the romance of Cinderella or the soothing hands of an
old lady when we are talking about time. And do you know why? It’s
because we do not have the time for it!
We are going to try and understand time in its many faces. No, I was
not referring to the faces of watches or clocks. I was referring to
the many meanings that time has. If you thought that time meant the
same to everyone, think again.
Picture a farmer who plants a tree sapling that will take ten to
twelve years to reach the stage when it will bear fruit. By then the
farmer may be under the soil himself.
Picture a prisoner in gaol counting on the bars of his cell waiting
for the seconds, minutes, and hours, days, weeks, months and years
to go by before he can be free again.
Now picture a young couple madly in love with each other cherishing
the few minutes they get to spend with each other every day, cursing
time because it flies so fast when they are together and never the
other way round.
So what does time mean to you?
When was the last time that you realized the value of time?
The answer could be the last time you watched one of those Hollywood
thrillers in which the hero is driving a car in which a time-bomb
has been planted and the hero is unaware of this. But we being the
getting-to-see-it-all audience watch with bated breath as the tiny
needle of the timer ticks towards the point at which the explosion
is sure to occur.
But just before that, the hero hits the brakes screeches to a halt
to avoid hitting that old lady crossing the road. And when he jumps
out to help her cross the road the needle reaches the point and the
bomb is exploded. And our hero is safe. It’s funny how the hero
always escapes without a scratch in these movies. But I expect
that’s why they call them heroes.
Now we are really transgressing aren’t we? So back to our subject
that is Time Management.
Do you know what is interesting about the concept of Time? It is
absolutely uncontrollable.
Personally I believe that there is something very humbling about
this concept. Just imagine, man with all his power is just like a
helpless babe before time. There it is Time stands tall and strong
before man and man remains vulnerable and weak before it. Man, the
big strong man who tamed rivers and seas, who reached out to the
skies and beyond, who harnessed wind and water and dug up the bowels
of the earth is but a worm before Time.
The best he can do to win the battle against time is die is hair and
use some anti-wrinkle cream on his face. In fact, the closest that
man has got towards conquering time is those many history books that
have been penned; they are of course chronicles of events that
happened long ago and that is certainly not much to boast about.
And so now we come to our subject that is time management because
after all the illustrations given above, I hope that I have made one
point clear, that is that Time cannot be controlled, it can only be
managed. And that is what we are going to do. We are going to learn
the art of time management. I don’t want you to have an air of
helplessness. You might begin to feel that if the battle cannot be
won, then what is point in putting up a struggle? Ah, but there you
are missing out on a very important point. In all the illustrations
that I used above, I was referring to man in general and not to one
particular Tom, Dick or Harry.
So you can see that this aspect of time is applicable to every human
being and there is no running away from it. Every person has only
twenty-four hours in a day and no force on earth can alter that. So
in order to get the cutting edge what you have to do is to be able
to manage your time in the most effective way possible.
And that is what Time Management
is all about. It’s about managing your time effectively and if I may
I would like to add the word efficiently too.
Now, when we talk about our resources, every one knows that we are
referring to the resources like fossil fuels, forests, mineral
wealth, and water bodies and so on. But surprisingly time is never
included in this list. When we talk about non-renewable resources,
fossil fuels like coal, petroleum and natural gas top the list. But
what about time? A point that most people tend to forget is that
time is the most valuable resource that we have, and time once lost,
is lost forever. We can think about alternate sources of energy for
fossil fuels like electricity, fuel cells, solar energy and the
research goes on. But is there any alternative for time that is
lost.
Again I stress on the point that time once lost, is lost forever.
And hence we have the proverb, “time and tide wait for no man.”
