Transcripts
1. Introduction : Is more important than time. It's the only resource
that you spend, and there is no way for
you to get it back, which makes it really important to learn and know how to manage your precious time wisely and to avoid leaks
here and there, draining such an
important resource. And in this current class, I'm going to help you develop the awareness and the
understanding about the importance of time
management skills and the key areas and
impact in your life. In addition to key
distractions and key habits which are
draining your attention and moving you away
from your goals and aspirations by depleting that powerful resource,
which is time. And not just that.
I'll be providing you with an exclusive checklist
that you could just simply download and go through
it to help you identify areas of your own unique life
which are depleting time. That way, you're
able to identify the issues with time management that you're
suffering from, and you're able to develop
a plan to deal with them. All of these will don't be tackling them in
this current class.
2. Your Project: Your project for the
current class revolves around using the checklist
provided to you to help you identify the key areas in your life which are
depleting your time. The key areas that you need
to focus on as part of your awareness development on the importance of time
management skills. That way, you're able to identify where are
you losing time, why things are not getting done, which will help you
move forward and build a solid plan to
get this out of the way.
3. What is Time Management Actually: Now, the first thing that
we need to understand is to define what
is time management. Often we tend to associate
time management just simply doing things as much as possible within a
certain time frame. But there are many
elements which act behind the scenes that dictate the definition of
time management. First of all, let's have
the basic definition. The efficient use
of time to focus on important tasks and
avoid distractions. What I want you to emphasize
on is the word of efficient. What does the word
efficient mean? It means you are using
your time properly, which is 24 hours per day
in the best way possible. Now, the best way possible varies from one
person to the other. Everyone got their
own work schedule, got their own lifestyle, got their own day
to day activities. So it's important to know that there is no
one shoe fits all. We have basic foundations
for time management, basic insights that we
apply to our unique lives. That way you were
able to figure out what are the areas
that we are able to give more time and what are
the areas that we need to actually not focus on
or to get away from, which are getting in the way of our progress or our goals. So at the end of the
day, the whole purpose of managing your time is to help you get some whether you're planning on
a fitness activity, whether you're planning
on a career goal, you're planning on achieving
a certain milestone. This is the whole purpose of managing time, using a resource, which is time in the best way possible to reach an end goal, minimizing distractions
and focusing on what matters the most
based on your own life. This is very important
because many individuals they
might assume that. If a certain, let's say, schedule or certain approach to managing time
works for someone, it has to work for someone
else on the contrary. There are various
elements that you need to take into account, and this is what
we're going to help you identify along the way. Moving on to point
number two that goes in hand in hand with
time management, which is productivity. By achieving proper
time management skills, we're able to achieve more in less time with better focus. This is very important. When
you're doing something, you could spend 10 hours, right? 5 hours, 10 hours. And if you have no idea,
what is time management? What are the fundamentals,
the foundations? And what is as a
principle as a whole? You assume that if you walk into your
office, for example, you clock in at 8:00
A.M. And you clock out at 5:00 P.M. You had
a productive day. This association between time and productivity
tends to be elusive. You need to disengage
the number of hours from the actual productivity results.
What do I mean by this? If you're working on writing
a book, for example, you could spend
every single day, 8 hours just simply to
write a single page, right? If you're focusing on hours as the metric or the
measure of productivity, well, you've done
a really good job. However, what is
the task at hand? What are you trying to achieve? You are trying to
write a book page. We're trying to write a book. So within every single day, we need to get a page out
of the way, for example. So if I'm able to
do this in 2 hours, for example, why do I need
to spend 8 hours on it? And this is where
the difference lies. This is where productivity comes hand in hand
with time management. If you're able to allocate
time for a specific task, which is important to you, helping you reach
a certain goal. You need to be productive along the way to make sure
that you're using this block of time
effectively to get the job done in
the best way possible, highest quality,
fastest way possible. Now, when I say faster, it doesn't mean you're going to jeopardize the quality for the sake of getting
things done on the contrary. You're
going to be fair. This is the whole
concept to keep in mind. You're going to be fair
with your approach to managing your own time. If one single page takes you one to 2 hours based on your own abilities
or capabilities, like I've mentioned, this varies from one
person to the other. Everyone got their own skill
sets, their own abilities. They are quite experts in
certain areas or fields. So this does not map
to everyone as is. It might take me 5 hours
to write a book page. It might take you
an hour to do so. Both of us we're going to be
productive in that sense. We're going to be managing
our time properly, but the abilities are different. So this is something which is at a person to person basis. So this is something
to keep in mind. Time management is
uniquely yours. This is something that you
are going to be developing for your own personal
aspirations and goals. And I'm going to show you
the key fundamentals, the key elements to help
you fine tune the picture, to understand how
to navigate this. So, time management is the
efficient use of time, which goes hand in hand
with productivity, how to make use of the time to complete tasks in
the best way possible, which leads us to
something which is at the back end the
enhanced well being. Reducing stress by
managing time effectively. Because at the end of the day,
let me ask you something. What is the point of managing your time to get
things done, right? And what happens when you
don't get things done? Things stack up, they pile up. And they stress you out. And what happens when you are under prolonged stress for
a long period of time, because of the stuff
that you know you need to do and you
didn't do them, and they have a direct
impact on your life. Literally, you burn out. Your cortisol level
rises really high. You end up being fatigued,
drained, brain fogged, which affects your physical, psychological and
emotional well being. So you see the interlink between time management productivity
and your overall well being. And this is the building
block, your well being. This is what we're
trying to achieve by properly managing time. It's not about getting
the tasks done. It's about being
fair with the tasks, giving the tasks the
time that they need, but at the same time to spare you from the hassle
later on from the overwhelm from
the stress that comes along from poor time management.
4. Why Does Time Management Matter: The question is why time
management matters? Well, if you think about it, it cascades to almost every
single element of your life. If you're not able to allocate tasks within a certain
time frame or to focus on time as a metric
to drive your progress, you'll be just simply
living by day to day. You have no idea what's going to happen on the following
day of the week. You have no idea
if you're moving closer to your goals
or aspirations, and time literally will
just simply eat you up and you'll end up moving forward but literally not moving forward because
time is being wasted. Think about it like a resource. Always emphasize this. Think
about it like a resource. And the unfortunate
thing about time, it's once you spend it, there's no way that
you can get it back. And the only way
for you to make use of time is to actually
be productive, allocate a certain
time block and get as much stuff that you could do physically in a
productive fashion, maintaining quality as possible
within that time frame, because at the end of the day, once that hour is
gone, Ler is gone. There's no way for
you to get it back. So keep that at the
back of your mind. You're spending a very
valuable resource on a day to day
basis, which is time. So by managing time properly, you are moving one step forward towards
achieving your goals by staying on track with your own personal and
professional objectives. If you set a time frame to get the job done and
you stick to it, most probably you
will get the job done if you're quite
mindful about this. You know that you need
to get something done. In a certain time frame. And this is where
project management comes handy, by the way. As a project
manager, time frames dictate the progress
of the entire project. Certain milestones should be achieved in a
certain time frame. Otherwise, a building
which could be constructed in two
years will take you 25 years to do if you're just simply waiting for
everything to, you know, fall into place. It doesn't work that way, unfortunately. You
have to create a plan. You need to have tasks, you need to have time frames, and you need to move forward
towards those tasks, which leads us to
better decision making. If you have been presented
with various tasks in front of you and you know
that during the day, certain tasks should be tackled, other tasks should be delegated, other tasks should be completely
ignored and neglected. You become a better
decision maker. Under certain time constraints, you have a clear map where everything falls
within your day. Let me simplify even further. Let's say you have your own
exercise morning routine, and then you have in the evening a different routine,
and in the noontime, you get a different routine, and you do this on a day
to day basis, right? And then something comes
along, and this is life. Things they do happen. You might have things pop out of the blue, and you need to tackle them. Because you know your routine on a day to day basis and you're
very familiar with it, you're able to allocate
the time for that task. You're able to shift things around and still get stuff done, making you a better
decision maker. Why? Because you have
been equipped with the ability to manage
your time wisely, which leads to once again to the core result,
work life balance. If you recall from
the previous lesson, we said it has a direct
impact on well being. And literally, anyone who has no ability to manage their
time one way or another, they're going to be stressed
out, leading to burnout, then cascading to
different areas of their life, their health, their time commitments, their whole development
in general, their productivity levels,
and the list goes on. Why? Because of one single act, which is the lack
of time management, which cascades and snowballs,
elevating stress levels, eventually burning you out, and then you end up having
no time to do anything else rather than
trying to run here and there and tackle the stuff that you should have done in
the first place, right? So work life balance
is real, by the way. You need to keep it as a
focal point in your life. You need to achieve
that balance. You cannot just simply
assume that you need to work all the time or just
simply have life all the time. There's a fine balance. You allocate a certain number of hours per day and per week
in order to get stuff done, and then you got
your own time to get other stuff done based on your own interests
and preferences. And how would you
achieve this if you're not able to
manage your time wise? If you'll be at the gym and responding to emails at
the same time, right? You're fusing work and your own personal hobbies
at the same time, which at the end of the
day deprives the joy from your own hobbies and affects your work performance,
negative, negative, right? Both of them will not
get you anywhere. And you assume that by
being overly occupied, that you're managing
your time wisely. So we need to create
that disconnect. If we are overly busy, it doesn't mean we're
managing our time wisely. If we're being overly busy, it doesn't mean we're
being productive. If we are spending
a lot of hours just simply staring
at a piece of paper, it doesn't mean we
get stuff done. We need to create that disconnect
between time, the task, and how productive are we
such that the end result is, if we have a certain
hour for the task, we're going to get
the job done within that hour in the
best way possible, maintaining high
quality and efficiency. That way, you're
able to allocate hours for certain tasks,
you get them done, and you move on helping you
achieve your goals faster, making you a better
decision maker. At the end of the day,
this will reflect on your overall work life balance where you get the
stuff done at work, at the end of the day,
you still have a life.
5. Common Time Wasting Habits: Now let's take a look at some common time wasting habits either that
you're familiar with, or you need to develop
the awareness that you're actually wasting time
due to those activities. And this is the part where you actually takes some
time to reflect. If we have no idea
what is the problem, we cannot just simply
navigate the problem. At this stage, we need to identify the key wasting habits, time wasting habits that
you are dealing with. It takes a moment of reflection, sit down with a pen and paper. Print a checklist,
just simply write them down and go through the stuff which are uniquely
yours based on these current insights
and the stuff that I'm going to be
teaching you right now. That way, you have a clear idea. Where are you falling behind? You develop that awareness before you build proper skills. And the first thing,
obviously, procrastination, which is known as the
killer of dreams, delaying tasks leads
to last minute stress. By all means. All of
us we've done it. I've done it myself, where you assume that you have
a lot of time left, simply wait for the last
minute to get the job done, and then you figure out, well, it's too demanding or it's
too stressful to get it done. You end up either
not doing it at all, or you end up doing
it with mistakes. Procrastination stems from
a very basic approach that our mind or brain
tends to follow. Comfort. If we are in a current state right now
where we are comfortable, our default setting is
to stay in that state. Now, I'm not going to add in some engineering and
physics based stuff to it because the subject
by itself is very, very elusive and requires
in depth analysis. But in summary, our
brains prefer comfort. If we have an obstacle
or a task which tends to be overwhelming
or challenging, and we are in a good position
which is comfortable. Let's say you're watching TV, you're snacking or you're
talking to your friends, your brain by default, chooses this as the option
of least resistance. Let's stay in that position, stay in that state because why move further if there's
no pressure to do so. And this is where
you come across procrastination where
you end up making the decision to push the
task further because, well, I will get there later. I'm comfortable right now. And this happens at a
subconscious level. So how do you overcome
procrastination? There have been a
lot of studies on this, a lot of approaches, and the way I would
like to navigate this and the way I do the process of avoiding
procrastination or how I navigate procrastination simply by two
different approaches. First of all, Act. That's it. If you think of something
that you need to do, which helps you move further, do not think about
it too much and just simply act because the
more you think about it, the more your brain
will actually come up with reasons why
you shouldn't do it, because what we have said is, we tend to prefer comfort. So negotiating with
your own brain whether or not you should
do that task right now, the more negotiations
you go for, the less likely you'll
get the job done because the optimological answer
is comfort right now. So how do you bypass the take a look at the step that you
need to follow the task. Is there something important?
Shall I do it right now? Do not overthink it and just simply do it,
and guess what? All of a sudden,
your brain flips from thinking about the task
to actually doing the task. Try this out and make sure that actually you share
your feedback. How did that work out for you. Moving on to the second point, which is the issue with
the era that we're in, distractions, social media
and unimportant tasks which are bombarding your attention
on a day to day basis. Email notifications, social
media notifications, phone calls, pop ups, all of these things are
draining your attention. So when you are dealing
with a certain task, turn off your phone,
mute all notifications. Do not pick up calls, do not respond to anything
beyond the task at hand. You will be surprised how many professionals they assume that when
they go to work 8-5, spend all day
responding to emails, taking a look at their
social media profiles, responding to disturbances
here and there, they count us towards, well, we've been
productive during the day. Unfortunately, it's
time being wasted. You need to differentiate. Is the time I'm using right
now? This is my resource? Am I using it to
get the task done? Is it being channeled
towards the task? At any point in time, where you deviate through social media, email updates,
notifications, phone calls, whatever distractions
that you have, it means you're wasting time, either you're channeling
time or you're wasting time because
time is continuous. It doesn't stop for
anybody, right? So either you channel
it to get the job done or you'll end
up wasting it. So we need to eliminate
distractions. We need to tackle
procrastination in order to minimize those time wasting
habits and their impacts. And finally, we do have one, which is not related
to, let's say, the human nature of distractions
and procrastination, but actually the
lack of planning. If we go to the next
day and we have no idea what are we going to be doing for the next
day or a rough plan? You'll end up just
simply walking into a brand new day waiting for things to happen to you and
just simply to respond, you're going to be on
a responsive basis rather than an action
based driven initiative. You'll be just simply waiting
for things to happen, someone to tell you what to do, your boss, your manager,
to get the job done. However, you are not taking
command of your day. Why due to lack of planning? Because you have no idea what you need to do
in the upcoming day. You have not clearly
laid out the time frame. What are the stuff
that you're going to be achieving in
the upcoming day? Which leads to wasting time, which leads to procrastination, which leads to distractions. See how all of them
are interlinked. If you're not planning
your day properly, you're more susceptible
to distractions, picking up your
phone, responding to emails, picking up calls. You're more susceptible
to procrastinating. Playing a video
game, for example, because you have no idea
what to do for your. All of these are examples of
common time wasting habits. So for procrastination,
just simply act. Don't think too much about it. Distractions eliminate
distractions, turn off your phone,
turn off notifications, sit in a quiet place where
you're not surrounded by distractions or individuals that are going to be demanding
your attention at work. For example, you got colleagues that come, they want
to have a discussion. Be busy, be active, remove the distractions
and plan ahead. If you're walking into work, whatever your industries
at as an entrepreneur, content creator, a
finance manager, accountant, whatever it is. Make sure that the day
before or the night before, you have a clear
idea what are you going to be achieving
in the day ahead. That way you walk into a brand new day with a
clear idea how are you going to be spending
your time rather than having stuff around
you, consume your time.
6. Impact of Poor Time Management: Now let's assume
you're oblivious about time management and the
impact it has on your life. I'm going to share with you some important end results
that you're going to be facing either in
the short term or the long term if you do not get your time management
skills in check. First of all, missed deadlines. Failure to meet expectations
obviously leads to stress, whether at your own personal
level or work level. Imagine you have a
meeting and then you receive an invitation via email from your
manager or your boss, and then you fail
to manage your time properly where you have double
meetings, three meetings, all of them happening at the
same time because you're completely oblivious
about your calendar, your day, and how things
are moving during your day. This leads to missing deadlines, whether at your
own personal level or at your own
professional level. For example, you do have a
very important occasion, very important event, and you're not managing
your time properly, you end up either missing
the event or missing work related activities or both as a result of
such a missed deadline. Time management actually saves you the hassle of missing
deadlines where you have a clear idea what's happening within your life on a day to day basis, week to week basis, month to month basis to minimize stress and to make sure
that you're moving forward, which at the end of the day, like we have mentioned,
affects your own well being. That's the whole purpose of
managing your time wisely to have solid well being.
You're not stressed. You're not overly worked.
You're not burning out. You're spending time at work, you're spending time your own personal leisure activities, your hobbies, with
a clear separation between both without
negatively affecting both. Low productivity.
Obviously, when you are not managing
your time properly, two things will happen. Work quality will suffer, and the quantity will
suffer. Both of them. You're not able to manage your
time to get the job done, hence affecting the output, the quantity which is going out. And if you actually manage
to cram everything together, where you have many things
happening at the same time, you're going to affect
the quality as well. So both cases, either waiting for things last
minute or not knowing how to allocate the
sufficient time for every single task will
affect the output from the task and the quality of the which leads us
to the final point, which again,
revolves around you. That's why at the beginning, I've mentioned that
the whole purpose of time management is
to help you and it's specific for
your own unique case, because if you're not able to
manage your life properly, you'll end up burning out. And this is where we
have the overwhelm from mismanaged tasks, which at the end of the day affects your most
important asset, which is your health if
you're stressed out, you're not healthy, you're
burning out, you're tired. You're getting sick,
you're getting fatigued. What's the whole
point of managing your time if you're
not able to deliver? Right? Keep that at
the back of your mind. Your biggest asset
is your health, and time management
is there to help you maintain that level or
to optimize that level. Time management is not a luxury. It's a necessity because
at the end of the day, if you do not manage
your time properly, who's going to be paying
the price? Simply you. You'll be stressed
out. You'll be behind. You'll be missing your
goals, aspirations, and deadlines, which will have a negative impact
on your overall life. So at this current stage, you have developed that awareness
about the importance of time management and how it affects various aspects
of our day to day living.
7. Wrapping Up: So, what do you think? I truly hope that you found
the class helpful. If it helped you at least by 1%, it means it did
its job perfectly. Time management is crucial, especially in today's world. You need to know how to manage
your time effectively in order to move further and to develop your goals
and aspirations. Hopefully, you found
it quite helpful and look forward to
receiving your feedback, and make sure that you
follow my profile for the latest releases and
updates until the next class.
Engr. Hussein Attié, Entrepreneur I Engineer I Educator
