Focus — The Art of Time Management! For Beginners

“The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.” — Bruce Lee

Dronacarya, a martial arts teacher, was training his students in archery. He took them to a nearby tree and on one of the branches was a wooden parrot. “Aim at the eye of the bird and tell me what are you seeing?” “The bird and fruits on the tree”, said one student. “The bird, the tree, the sky and the earth”, said another. Both were asked not to shoot. Finally came Arjuna who said, “the eye of the bird!” He was asked to shoot and he made it!

Time management is a struggle for the most! Seminars, sessions, books and there we are, back to square one! Why? The problem is not less time, but the inefficient usage of available time!

When a person tries to do multiple things together, focus keeps shifting. This kills the thought process repeatedly. When we shift back to the previous task, we need to revive back the old thought process. This is what kills our productivity and hence, time!

Example: A student is preparing for an exam. Suddenly, a notification pops up on the mobile. Impact? The thought process of study is killed and a new thought process is created for reading the mobile notification. Solution?

“Work while you work. Play while you play.”

Focus! Krishna advises in the Bhagavad Gita 2.41, “ekeha kuru-nandana”. Focus on a single task. Complete it and move to the next!

Based on this principle of Importance and urgance we discuss below about the time management skill.

Why time management is important and how we can do it for ourselves.

For knowing or making anything more interesting we should first know that how it is important for us in our life.

1. If we try to know about any successful person or observe his life one thing is very common that is their discipline and their time management skill.
2. We also know that discipline comes from time management.
3. Time management skill makes the life productive and reduce the stress in the busy schedule of our life.
4. With the time management skill we can prioritise our tasks according to their importance and divide our time for each of them so that we lead a meaningful live for ourselves, our family and the entire world.

So we can say that time management skill is a very important to succeed the higher position in our life.

Time Tested Method for Time Management

Now we will see how we can do time management easily:

1. First of all we need to observe our daily routine and also identify tasks that we are supposed to do.
2. Write down all your tasks preferably on a copy.
3. Now we will categorise all of our tasks in four quadrants that is :

Q1 : Important and urgent. (Urgency)

This comprise all those tasks which have very clear deadlines or big consequences if not done on time.

They generally directly affect our future and are very relevant to us also for our current time like preparation for semester or annual  examination.

Tasks include but not limited to :

• Submitting our college assignments / bills / work assignments.
• Preparing for Exams whose dates are very clear to us.
• Deadlines given by our Boss.
• Reaching train station on time, else train will leave us back. 😉

Q2 : Important but not urgent. (Quality)

These tasks are the ones which matters to us the most, but we tend to skip them because of the other urgent and other seemingly pleasant stuff such as games. The activities in quadrant 2 include our health, our relationships, our career plans, our spiritual practices, and alike.

We must give a fixed time in our day for reading Srimad Bhagavad Gita say 15 minutes, but we must give this is a very good practise.

Q3 : Not important but urgent. (Delegate)

Those things which can not be avoided on time being such some unexpected friends, or calls, meetings, we have to handle them.

For these outlook should be always careful, that these are interruptions to my regular work, they are not my work, i must wrap them up as soon as possible (and yet politely), and then turn back to main work.

Q4 : Neither important nor urgent. (Delete)

Those things and activities which we ourselves know are unproductive and taking away our valuable time such as gossip with friends , wandering without reason or say it as wastage of time.

What Next after making divisions of Tasks ?

Once you have classified your tasks in these quadrants, now we have to process them.

1. Take a look on current daily routine to observe your spent time according to the above quadrants and
2. Try to minimize or vanish the spent time in 4rth quadrant (Q4)
3. Try to minimize spent time in 3rd quadrant (Q3) because it is not going to improve skills to ward your future.
4. Work under the 1st quadrant (Q1) should be the done as soon as possible since these tasks have clear deadlines. Finish them off as soon as possible, do not let them stay longer in your queues.
5. Our aim should be to work under Quadrant 2, the Quadrant of Quality.
   1. By working under Quadrant 2, I mean that we should first try our best to finish Q1 Tasks .
   2. and then We are not pressurised by urgency, and we work on things which matter to us the most ie the tasks of Q2.

Bonus Tips

For working with more efficiency, it is very important that one should be  physically and mentally healthy.

The works that improve our mental and physical health we can categorise it as important but not urgent ( which means of 2nd quadrant). Which is very important as discussed above so :-

• It is a good habit if we keep physical activity in our routine, going to gym is not necessary we can do walking, cycling, jogging, etc these are also very good exercises, we can keep about 3-4 hours a week for these activities.

• Also we must try to give at least 15 minutes everyday to your increasing our inner strength by meditation, reading spiritual books like Sri Geeta Upanishad etc.

These things boost up your mind and encourage you to do your best.

Now when you practise consciously to stay in Quadrant 2 for working you will feel yourself confident, your self esteem increasing and yourself satisfied with your contributions.

Always remember that it is not feasible to be always in quad 2, life is so dynamic that we will face quadrants 1,3 and 4 also, but we have to try out best to just these quads.

• Quad 1 : Just do them.
• Quad 3 : Delegate them.
• Quad 4 : Delete them.
• Quad 2 : Plan them.

Conclusion:

• Make list of daily activities that you have to do, you can keep note of daily activities separately And calculate time fixed for them
• Next, categories your goals and tasks in four quadrants.
• Now first divide the time for 1 and 2 quadrant that is important for your future your and distribute the work to your working time as you can follow it with the closest perfection.
• Add some interesting activities in intervals that entertains in following routine like working on physical and mental health.
• Separate a time in which you can read or listen some spiritual books like bhagwad geeta.
• And for more tips and techniques from Gita in our life. register for our free Gita course.

See you next time, till then don't forget to share your experience with us for these tips.