Time Management in Wonderland

“Warning!  Dates in calendar are closer than they appear.” 

Now wouldn’t that be a handy reminder on the welcome screen of your PDA or in your date book? Time is not given to us; rather, it is only made available to us.  As a non-renewable resource, time is – quite literally – here today and gone tomorrow. How you choose to utilize it, however, is entirely up to you.   

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” Alice asked. “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.  As the Cheshire Cat in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland points out, a lack of clear direction can result in sub-optimal decisions and wasted time.  Did you know that the #1 factor contributing to time inefficiencies in an organization is the absence of clear goals and priorities? This makes decision-making a chore and generally causes confusion about what should be accomplished, why, and by when. Not exactly the stuff of precision time management! 

Think about a situation in your life where you exhibited exceptional time management.  Maybe it was the day or two before you departed on vacation when you had a number of things to accomplish in a tight timeframe.  If you’re like most people, you probably made yourself a list of things that you needed to get done before you left town.  And wasn’t it miraculous?  In that situation, you seemed to “find” the time to get everything accomplished so you could go on your merry way. 

What happened here is – gulp! – you set clear, time-bound goals for yourself.  More importantly, you got them done.  Yes, sometimes something as simple as a “to do” list can go a long way to improve time effectiveness in an organization.  Seeing the items on the list (your goals), knowing when they must get accomplished (the timeframe), and understanding what’s at stake for yourself (vacation!) work together to create an invisible motivational force that impels you to act and to become very time efficient. 

Just imagine if you could create that environment throughout your organization – clear goals, timeframes, and a gut awareness of the rewards for success – each and every day!  Well – you can, so why not give it a try?   

The clock is ticking…