Different Strokes- A Powerful Perspective on Time Management

K M Ganesh

( KM Ganesh graduated with a Gold Medal in M.Phil from the Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning after completing his B.Sc and M.Sc in Chemistry. Currently he is pursuing his Ph.D. in Chemistry from SSSIHL. He is an excellent dramatist lending his rich voice to most of the leading characters in dramas enacted before Swami. Known for his witty remarks and quick sense of humour, Ganesh is also a brilliant athlete having the unique distinction of winning all racing events at the University. This champion runner who races against the milliseconds of time, discusses in this articles some simple techniques for better time management.)

Imagine! Searching for Kutub Minar in the city of Chennai. Driving to reach Taj Mahal, you are exploring the city of Bangalore! You may be driving at a top speed in the latest sports car, even over taking the other cars but will you ever reach your destination? NO. Why? Because you are driving with the wrong map in a different city.

Even a little introspection will reveal that most of us are living in the insanity of trying to speed up things but not doing what we are really meant to be doing. Why? We have equated time management with doing things faster. Smart phones, faster cars, latest technological gadgets, …yes technology has made our world small but the critical point is not to do things faster but to do first things first! Have we prioritized our agendas? Some have 10 priorities in life…..they actually have no priority at all!

Here is a very powerful model to actually manage time which has been adopted from one of the many works of Stephen Covey¹.And here it goes….

We can divide the time we spend in 24 hrs into 4 basic categories :

QUADRANT 1 Urgent Not Important	QUADRANT 2 Urgent Important
Not Urgent Not Important QUADRANT 4	Not Urgent Important                       QUADRANT 3

Quadrant 1[Urgent and not important]: An abrupt phone call, a sudden knock on the door, getting delegated on a work by the boss or wife in the middle of your work! etc.

1Stephen Covey, A. Roger and Rebecca R. Merrill have written First Things First, which is a self-help book on time management .

Quadrant 2[Urgent and important]:  A day before exam, preparing a presentation before the boss or some delegation, medical emergencies etc. Examples can be multiplied.

Generally the time we spend in quadrant 1 and 2 are not in our control as they come under urgent category and we have no choice but to respond to it. Luckily they don’t occupy the big chunk of the 24 hrs time we have in a day. The actual difference that we can make in our lives is how we handle quadrant 3 and 4!

Quadrant 3[ Not Urgent and important]: Spending time on your subject, your expertise, your skills that will enhance your performance in your career, communication skills, reading inspiring books and yes transmitting those inspirations into actions, yoga that will boost your health, service, sadhana etc. Times spent on these activities are long term investments which truly improve the quality of our life. They help us realize our long term goals and eventually gives us contentment. They also reduce the stress from our life as more time we spend on things that are important to us, lesser will be the situations that are urgent.

Quadrant 4 [Not Urgent and not important]: Facebook, twitter, unending  internet chats, mobile chats, video games, movies, roaming around, oversleeping, excessive talking, reading meaningless novels etc…examples can’t be multiplied, they are infact exponential!! We have 1000’s of time killers. This is where we can make the actual difference. We must cut all the time gobblers with utmost vigilance!

Time management then boils down to shifting the gear from quadrant 4 à quadrant 3. All we need to do is divert our energy and time into quadrant 3. If we carefully observe, we actually end up spending big chunk of our time in not urgent, not important activities. This pattern should be immediately replaced by quadrant 3. How?

No improvement is possible if the effort or progress in that line is not monitored. Here is a simple tool to do so. Take a small pocket pad and draw two concentric circles. The inner circle represents time spent in alignment with your goals. The outer circle represents the time spent contradictory to the course of achieving your goals. You have the choice on the nature of you work to star mark every 1 or 2 or 3 hours as to whether you were spending your time in the inner circle or outer circle in the previous 1 or 2 or 3 hours.

Quadrant 3 oriented approach. [Not urgent, important ]

Quadrant 4 oriented approach [Not urgent, Not important ]

At the end of the day, you will see for yourself that how you were wasting time and the next day you will be more determined to shift the stars from outer circle to inner circle! Isn’t it simple? Yet it is very a powerful. I am sure that the last 10 minutes that you spent reading this article deserves a place in your  quadrant 3 :-)!!

 Wishing you all the best.

Loving Sai Ram!