TIME MANAGEMENT TOOLS

TIME MANAGEMENT (3)

By Ayo Emakhiomhe

TIME MANAGEMENT TOOLS

The tools stated here are not all conclusive, it is actually using what works best for you. They are those things you need to apply to achieve effective and efficient time management and become the time lord!

It starts with zero based thinking-ZBB; ZBB states ‘knowing what I know now and if I had to do it all over again, would I get into it again?’

Next thing you need to do before using any of the tools is effective planning and being deliberate. It also involves the willingness to pay the price – sacrifice.

Having done all the above, you can now employ the following primary and secondary time management tools;

The primary tools are the main tools you need to manage and plan your time effectively; the primary tools are those that you use to support the primary tools

                PRIMARY TOOLS

v  Goal maps: This involves 7 questions;

1.   What do you what to achieve?

2.   Order: which goals take priority?

3.   Draw: communicate your goal to your subconscious

4.   Why; identify your emotional drivers

5.   When; define your timeline

6.   How; what are the actions you will need to take?

7.   Who; choose the people or organisations that can support you.

v  Pros and cons: This is used mainly for deciding between 2 options. This is especially when the 2 options benefit your goal equally.

For example choosing between getting a promotion and learning French for your trip to France for holidays

v  Time style: Effective time management is a matter of style- working with your strong personalities and delegating the rest.

It is based on the principle that there is no right way to manage your time except your way.

‘T’ are good decision makers and can whip up a task list in no time.

2. ‘I’ are great enthusiasts and can get any show on the road

3. ‘M’ has tireless patience and are excellent team players

‘E’ are meticulous and will always finish the job on time and within budget.

Understand your own time style so you can conduct yourself accordingly; enlist help in areas of personal weaknesses

Know your time style and work with it today.

Priority quadrant

It involves prioritizing your activities and deciding:

1.   Which activity directly affects your goal/objective

2.   Which activity indirectly affects your goal/objective

3.   Which activity does not in any way affect your goal/objective

You focus on, spend more time and energy on activities in 1 and 2 above and completely eliminate activities in 3 above.

SECONDARY TOOLS

v  Use organizers (digital and manual)

v  Set daily priority lists/”TO DO lists”

v  Delegation/’other peoples time’

v  Saying ‘NO’, learn to use the power of the word ‘NO’. say no to time wasters, say no to quadrant 4 activities, say no to those activities/requests that do not contribute to your goals.

v  Use your diary

v  Use your computers, ‘Tablets’, IPODS

v  Use your mobile phones, IPHONES

v  Use the web

BE THE TIME LORD!

Are you ready to be the time lord? Have I been able to help you double your effectiveness?

Remember, the journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step and failure is not denial, just an opportunity to learn and be better.

Practice! Practice! Practice! And you will be the time lord.

Shalom.

Paper based on inspirations from the works of Simon Phillips and Brian Tracy.

TIME MANAGEMENT (2)

TIME MANAGEMENT (2)

By Ayo Emakhiomhe

 

WHY TIME MANAGEMENT?

v  It shows how well you like yourself: if you like yourself well, you will use your time very well.

v  It is your most precious resource

v  It is irreplaceable

v  Successful people trade their time for money – they create value

v  Everything we do in life revolves around time

v  It determines the value you place on anything

WHAT IS TIME MANAGEMENT?

v  It is personal/life management

v  It allows you to control how events unfold in your life – controllable and uncontrollable variables. Uncontrollable variables are those things in our life that we have no control over like where we are born, who we are born to, when the sun rises and when it goes down. The controllable variables are those things in life we can influence, like reading this article, when we sleep, when we eat, going to work, etc. we should concentrate on molding the controllable variables in our lives to fit our life plan and focus on them and allow the uncontrollable variables take their course without worrying about them.

v  It is a skill and can be learned

v  It determines your life income and reward

v  It determines your return on energy(ROE): in investment parlance it is regarded as return on equity invested, in time management, it is a return that should create a clear balance in:

1.   Mental energy

2.   Physical energy

3.   Emotional energy

4.   Spiritual energy

We will continue with time management tools by next post.

TIME MANAGEMENT (1)

TIME MANAGEMENT

By Ayo Emakhiomhe

INTRODUCTION

·         One of the greatest skills you can possess today is time management.

·         We will take a look at time management to establish it as a core skill. If it is a skill, you can learn and master it

·         If you get the basics of time management right, success in every other area of your life is guaranteed to be achieved more smoothly.

·         Time management is all about you: yourself definition; the ‘why’ and the ‘how’, managing yourself better and achieving in other people’s time.

·         Time management is actually life management-time management goes beyond planning each day; it starts with planning your life, from the end to the present day, from the future to now, from the tombstone to the cradle. It is when you get it right with the main big issues that the small day to day issues will fall into place and have meaning in your life.

WHO ARE YOU?

The best way to fulfill your potential is just to be yourself. You will not achieve great results by imitating someone else.

To know who you are, write an Epitaph today.  

What were you able to write? Do you think that this is what would be written on your Epitaph if you were to die now?

Secondly, write a list of the five most important people in your life and what you hope to have left in their hearts; focus on the way you have behaved rather than on the actual things you have done.

It is said that you can tell how much importance an individual places on someone by the amount of time they spend with them. If your list is not representative of where you are spending your time, then you need to change it.

Thirdly, write a list of the five most important things in your life. Also, it is said that you can tell how much importance an individual places on a thing by the amount of time they spend with it. If the list you just created is not representative of where you are spending your time, then you need to change it.

Commit to making items/people on your list that you are currently neglecting a focus for the beneficial results you achieve from implementing the other activities in this course.

DISCOVER YOUR PERSON

How often do we take time out to reflect on our lives: what are we contributing, how do we benefit those around us, who we have become.

To discover who you really are, for the next 1 or 2 weeks, move around more consciously and note the following (possibly take some notes)

·         Listen to how people talk to you; people talk to you with intonations and inflections about how they feel about you

·         Listen to how you talk to others; a passage from the bible states that ‘from the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh’. Your words say a lot about who you are, it tells us where you are going to and where you are coming from.

·         Reflect on the number of times you get annoyed or frustrated. When you know where you are going to your patience will be natural, when you are full of love, you anger will be rare, when you are wise, your frustration will be a needle in a haystack.

·         Check how many times you smile; learn to appreciate everything about life genuinely, you live life only once.

·         Monitor how many times you say ‘thank you’ genuinely; learn to be truly grateful for everything, no one owes you nothing, you owe yourself and your world everything. Celebrate small victories.

·         Check how often you plan, implement and review your actions. He who fails to plan, plans to fail.

·         Reflect on how many new friends you have made; life is about relationships, seek them, treasure them, everyday. Make it a point to make at least 1 new friend a month for life, move out of that comfort zone, RELATE!

To understand yourself fully, you should walk the same distance in your own shoes. What I am saying is based on the age old principle that suggests that in order to understand another person; you should walk a mile in their shoes.

YOU ARE UNIQUE

Note that you as a person are a unique combination. Your uniqueness is comprised of:

v  Your physical state. For example, your physical fingerprints are not the same with anyone on the face of this planet

v  Your spiritual state; man is a spiritual being living in a box called our body. Anything that happens in the physical must first happen in the spiritual. No matter what you believe in, you have a spiritual nature and it is unique to you alone. God relates to everyone individually no matter the number of beings on the face of this earth.

v  Your circumstances; you have control over your circumstances to a great extent. Your circumstances define you and you define your circumstances.

v  Your environment; your environment is what you see it as and what you make of it and nothing more. If you see your environment as harsh, it will become so.

v  The times in which you live; today is now and there will never be another today, the experience you are having now is yours alone and will not be for another person tomorrow, it can only be similar.

This combination of time and place is sufficient for us to understand that right now we should be having the time of our lives.

It is time to discover our USP-our strength, our Universal selling point.

Think through the things that make you unique, those things that make up your strengths, those things you do exceptionally well. Write them down and list them in order of priority. The number 1 item is your strongest and it is the one item that people will immediately use to recognize you.

Having discovered that, now go out daily and find every opportunity to demonstrate this unique quality. As you hit the road daily, note the following:

v  We identify too closely with what we do instead of who we are.

v  You are a person, not a job title.

v  Your occupation is what occupies your time not what you invest your time on.

v  You are not defined by what you do but by who you are.

v  You are everything, and, everything is you.

v  Maximize the value that you get from every moment that you live

v  Activity is the key and is only the reason why successful people benefit from momentum in their lives and in their businesses

v  The risk of riskless living is the greatest risk of all. – @Stephen Covey

v  FEAR- this is False Evidences Appearing Real; it has no power in your life, stop giving your time to it.

v  Never point a finger of blame at someone else, throw solutions at others instead. Successful people do not dwell on issues that are not contributing to their goals.  Before you pass the buck, lay the blame or find the fault, look at the 4 fingers pointing back at you.

v  Think positive always

More by next post.

don't forget to check out our blog on small business - www.coinboxlimited.blogspot.com

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LETTER TO NIGERIAN PARENTS

BY IRENE POPOOLA

Friends,

Let me add the benefit of my time as a student and then resident in the UK - and I live in Lagos now.

The first thing that I discovered about UK-born, white, English undergraduates was that all of them did holiday or weekend job to support themselves - including the children of millionaires amongst them. It is the norm over there - regardless how wealthy their parents are. And I soon discovered that virtually all other foreign students did the same - the exception being those of us status-conscious Nigerians.

I also watched Richard Branson (owner of Virgin Airline) speaking on the Biography Channel and, to my amazement; he said that his young children travel in the economy class -even when the parents (he and his wife) are in upper class. Richard Branson is a billionaire in Pound Sterling. A quick survey would show you that only children from Nigeria fly business or upper class to commence their studies in the UK . No other foreign students do this. There is no aircraft attached to the office of the prime minister in the UK - he travels on BA. And the same goes for the Royals. The Queen does not have an aircraft for her exclusive use.

These practices simply become the culture which the next generation carries forward. Have you seen the car that Kate Middleton the lass married to Prince William drives? VW Golf or something close to it.

But there's one core difference in them and us (generally speaking).

They - the billionaires among them work for their money, we steal ours!

If we want our children to bring about the desired change we have been praying for on behalf of our dear country, then please, please let's begin now and teach them to work hard so that they can stand alone and most importantly be content, and not have to "steal". This seems to be the norm these days.

"30 is the new 18", which seems to be the new age for testing out the world in Nigeria now. That seems to be an unspoken but widely accepted mind set among the last 2 generations of parents in Nigeria .

At age 18 years, a typical young adult in the UK leaves the clutches of his/her parents for the University, chances are, that is the last time those parents will ever play "landlord" to their son or daughter except of course the occasional home visits during the academic year.

At 21 years and above or below, the now fully grown and independent minded adult graduates from University, searches for employment, gets a job and shares a flat with other young people on a journey into becoming fully fledged adults.

I can hear the echo of parents saying, well, that is because the UK economy is thriving, safe, well structured and jobs are everywhere? I beg to differ and I ask that you kindly hear me out. I am UK trained Recruitment Consultant and I have been practicing for the past 10 years in Nigeria. I have a broad range of experience from recruiting graduates to executive director level of large corporations. In addition, I talk from the point of view of someone with relatively privileged upbringing.

Driven to school every day, had my clothes washed for me, was barred from taking any part-time job during my A-levels so that I could concentrate on studying for my exams?! BUT, I got the opportunity to live apart from my parents from age 18 and the only time I came back home to stay was for 3 months before I got married!

Am I saying that every parent should wash their hands off their children at age 18? No, not at all, of course, I enjoyed the savings that I made from living on and off at my parent's house in London - indeed that is the primary reason for my being able to buy myself a 3 bedroom flat in London at age 25 with absolutely no direct financial help from my parents!

For me, pocket money stopped at age 22, not that it was ever enough for my lifestyle to compete with Paris Hilton s or Victoria Beckham's.

Meanwhile today, we have Nigerian children who have never worked for 5 minutes in their lives insisting on flying "only" first or business class, carrying the latest Louis Vuitton ensemble, Victoria's Secret underwear and wearing Jimmy Chos, fully paid for by their "loving"

parents.

I often get calls from anxious parents, my son graduated 2 years ago and is still looking for a job, can you please assist! Oh really! So where exactly this "child" is my usual question. Why are you the one making this call dad/mum?

I am yet to get a satisfactory answer, but between you and me, chances are that big boy is cruising around Lagos with a babe dressed to the nines, in his dad's spanking new SUV with enough "pocket money" to put your salary to shame. It is not at all strange to have a 28 year old who has NEVER worked for a day in his or her life in Nigeria but "earns" a six figure "salary" from parents for doing absolutely nothing.

I see them in my office once in a while, 26 years old with absolutely no skills to sell, apart from a shiny CV, written by his dad's secretary in the office. Of course, he has a driver at his beck and call and he is driven to the job interview. We have a fairly decent conversation and we get to the inevitable question - so, what salary are you looking to earn? Answer comes straight out - N250,000.00. I ask if that is per month or per annum. Of course it is per month. Oh, why do you think you should be earning that much on your first job? Well, because my current pocket money is N200,000.00 and I feel that an employer should be able to pay me more than my parents. I try very hard to compose myself, over parenting is in my opinion the greatest evil handicapping the Nigerian youth. It is at the root of our national malaise.

We have a youth population of tens of millions of who are being "breastfed and diapered" well into their 30s. Even though the examples I have given above are from parents of considerable affluence, similar patterns can be observed from Abeokuta to Adamawa! Wake up mum! Wake up dad! You practically love your children to death! No wonder corruption continues to thrive. We have a society of young people who have been brought up to expect something for nothing, as if it were a birth right. I want to encourage you to send your young men and women (anyone over 20 can hardly be called a child!) out into the world, maybe even consider reducing or stopping the pocket money to encourage them to think, explore and strive. Let them know that it is possible for them to succeed without your "help". Take a moment to think back to your own time as a young man/woman, what if someone had kept spoon feeding you, would you be where you are today? No tree grows well under another tree, children that are not exposed to challenges, don't cook well. That is why you see adults complaining, "my parents didn't buy clothes for me this Christmas", ask him/her how old are you? 30 years. Because of the challenges we faced in our youth, we are where and what we are today. This syndrome-my children will not suffer what I suffered is destroying our tomorrow.

Deliberately, reduce their allowance or mum-don't cook on Saturday till late afternoon or evening-do as occasion deserve.

I learnt the children of a former Nigerian head of state with all the stolen (billions) monies in their custody, still go about with security escort as wrecks. They are on drugs, several times because of the drug, they collapse in public places. The escort will quickly pack them and off they go, what a life! No one wants to marry them.

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.- Henry Ford. Hard work does not kill; everything in Nigeria is going down, including family settings. It is time to cook our children, preparing them for tomorrow. We are approaching the season in Nigeria where only the RUGGED, will survive. How will your ward fare?

If the present generation of Nigerian pilots retires, will you fly a plane flown by a young Nigerian pilot, If trained in Nigeria ? People now have first class, who cannot spell GRADUATE or read an article without bomb blast!

Which Way Nigeria ?, Which Way Nigerians!!

Is this how we will ALL sit and watch this country SINK?

SPIRITUAL TRAITS OF THE ZERO PERSONALITY (3)

By Ayo Emakhiomhe

This is the last spiritual trait of the zero personality we will be talking about. by next post in January, We will start with the "1" personality.

MORALE KILLER

The zero can be such a person that is so influencial or trusted in its religious circles that anything it has agreed to engage in, every other person in that cycle will join in. But a zero will deliberately or otherwise be the first to kill such an initiative by discouraging other towards conducting/implementing the otherwise positive decision reached.

This is a very strong negative trait because any person that is confused and spiritually down will be confused and spiritually down in the physical body/system.

the 2 are so aligned that 1 cannot work independently of the other, one has to be subject to the other.

When you are in any spiritual gathering for a good cause and you find someone there who is supposed to be a key player of that program suddenly producing negative vibes that can kill morale, please remind that person, or you (if that be it) not to be a zero.

We wish to thank you for remaining true to us all through this year. We promise a more bumper package by next year.

We also will like to wish you a very merry christmas and a happy and prosperous new year.

see you next year.