TIME

Educate

Time

We’re all working to deadlines these days and whether it’s getting our payroll submissions done, completing month end, or year end reports or even catching the last train home, somehow, we have to meet them all. Having been offered the privilege of writing a piece for TREND by Jake at Training First Safety back in January, I was mortified to have received an email this week enquiring about how my piece was coming along – I hadn’t started work on it. Worst still, I hadn’t decided on one specific subject to write about. Reflecting on the months that have flown by since New Year got me thinking about time and, how we use it. I’d seen on TV recently, a programme where the Physicist, Brian Cox explained how Time hasn’t changed for 13 million years….and, how it’s not likely to change again very soon. Surely 13 million years and a pandemic, where our use of time – for some of us getting back the hours usually spent commuting to work - is enough (time) for us to ‘get our heads’ around the concept? Not so it seems. We’ve heard lots of theories about time management, the Pareto Principle for one. Working in L&D I’m constantly encouraging Teams to include development, upskilling and delegation into their working. This, with a view to avoid continuous ‘firefighting’, to motivate and empower individuals, and to make workloads more evenly manageable…..all expected to save time. On reflection, I recognise that we always manage to make time for the things we want to do, choose to do. We’re not managing time, we’re managing ourselves.

When the dinosaurs were alive, there were 370 days in a year. The Earth's spin is getting slower because the moon's gravity is acting as a drag, so days are getting longer, by about 1.7 milliseconds per century.

Time

Educate

To this end, I thought I would share with fellow TREND readers the principles I’m following from now on to make the most of this finite commodity.

Get planning: Most of us use some kind of device with a calendar that will send us alerts. Take the time to plan effectively; choosing specific and realistic timeframes and timeslots.

Find the value of everything: Viewing all activities as valuable and worthwhile means that we will devote time to them instead of putting them off because we don’t really see the point.

Rome wasn’t built in a day: Breaking down each step towards overall completion of a project is very satisfying. Take the time to identify which steps can be completed and how long you’ll need for each step. You can always return to add, improve or perfect by planning a subsequent timeslot.

Stick to it!: Trust your planning. If you have allocated 2 hours stick to it! Overrunning means that time will be lost on your other plans. It’s limited remember? The number of hours in your day is fixed and it’s not changing any time soon.

Be kind: Include some time for you in your plans; to do something that you enjoy or choose for yourself. It is very satisfying and helps to reduce stress.

By the way, it has take around 2 minutes of your life (time) to read this.

Nancy Devalencia—Learning & Development Manager