If Time is Money, How Do I Become a Millionaire?

Time Management Tips for young Corporates-A SELF STARTER is what you should be.

Corporates look for youngsters with initiative. You need to be up and about even before someone asks you to do things. You might recall that scooters in India had originally only kick -start mechanisms. Later, around circa 1985 scooters came into the market that could get started by the push of a button and that literally sparked a revolution (the pun was unintended). Young students and homemakers and ladies now had a vehicle that didn’t need the expertise of a Pele to kick that vehicle to life. Sadly, the era didn’t really herald the arrival of people who were self- starters. We still have a lot of people who need to be pushed and prodded to do things. And some of them actually need to be kick-started.

It is popularly said that there are three types of people:

a. those who make things happen

b. those who wait for things to happen

c. those who wonder, what happened ?!!

Which one of these are you?

In today’s highly competitive corporate scenario, when there are at least a dozen others gunning for whatever you want in life, you need to be happening. You need to make things happen, always. And the first thing you need to do is to make things happen early. By being a self-starter.

Do you need to be pushed or pulled out of bed with buckets of water, numerous alarms and hassled parents? Or are you up with the larks and taking your early morning walk or jog as the sun comes up. I have already said earlier that the early bird gets the worm. He also gets more time. And time is the most precious gift god has given us.

Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Only today is with you. Which is why we call it the present, The gift of God. Don’t fritter it away. On the contrary get more time. By getting up early. Just 30 minutes earlier than you did before. And you have 180 hours more to yourself in the whole year. That could mean 180 swimming sessions, or 30 new books that you could read. Time to catch up with friends, chat with one’s parents. Or even 180 games of tennis, or badminton, or table tennis. 180 jogging sessions or gym workouts.

I suggest you use these 180 hours to do something that you always wanted to do but didn’t have the time to do it. or to pick up a new hobby or habit that you yearned for. Before the year gets over you see a new person in the mirror. You won’t recognize this person. Nor will your competitors. Good for you.

Learn to anticipate. This will happen only when you are up and about even well before the others. That extra time will improve your timing. Self- starters are confident people. They have already picked up the cues, and the clues.

Self- starters are proactive. They don’t wake up with a startled look when asked something. They have all the answers.

I will never ever forget this incident that happened early in my career. Like many salesmen who would get shooed out of the office early morning to go and make calls on customers, many of us would go to a Chai shop a safe distance away from our Branch Office. Somehow, for most salesmen this ritual of starting the day with a Community Tea session would provide the ideal push. We would sit on our Enfield Bullets and, over cups of steaming heavily sugared tea share interesting as well as sob stories with each other. You could perhaps easily guess that the butt of most stories would be the Boss. Srikant Nair, one of our colleagues, started talking about how he would soon get out of this company, which made his life miserable because of stiff targets and ruthless supervisors. He casually mentioned that he was aware that a well-known luggage manufacturing company was hiring salesmen and that he might just give that company a try. Vipul Shah, another colleague, excused himself a couple of minutes later, saying he had some important work to do. We learnt later that evening that Vipul had bagged the job. Srikant was only talking. The other guy landed up where it mattered and talked himself into the other company. Some of you may call this unethical. All I can say is – Vipul took the initiative. He left the other guy to do the talking. He did the doing.

Now, the famous question – how do I manage time? I hardly get time to do anything, how do I do things much more than my routine work?

Well, have you ever realized the maze that is created by the two words – urgent and important?

Let me show you how to differentiate between the two and how to actually get more time to do what you always wanted to do.

Let’s play with numbers for a little while.

Let’s allocate numbers according to the kind of job required of us to be done.

5 is for work that is urgent and important, both.

4 is for work that is important though not urgent.

2 is for work that is urgent but not important.

1 is for work that is neither urgent nor important.

Let me give you a few examples-

5 (urgent and important) could be a weekly report or an assignment waiting to be finished and to be mailed. Your assessment and your bosses’ report depends on this work which needs to be, and Must be completed today and Now.

4 (important though not urgent) is like work to be done in terms of planning, like working out a plan to carry out a project. Or planning for one’s future, like buying an insurance policy or even a bike. You need some time to do some research, ask around, get the info and then get cracking.

2 (urgent not important) is work that must be done now and immediately though not much mental effort is required for it. Like paying your electricity or mobile phone bill. Just do it. Don’t strategize, plan, brood or procrastinate. Procrastination eats into our precious work day and steals away valuable moments from us.

1(neither urgent nor important) is work that can be put on the cooler for a later day or time. Like reading junk mail or promotional material from those million companies that may contact you. If you are not in the market for their products you can afford to read those mailers later. Entertaining drop in visitors who walked in unannounced could be a great time waster as well. How to cut it short? Stand up and talk to them.

So, when you make your plan in your diary (I sincerely hope that you have one) for the day- just put these numbers alongside the work to be done. Your day should have ample 5 s and 4s. Successful people accomplish a lot of these. Routine- oriented people and people low in accomplishment struggle through the day with their 2s and 1s.Now you must be asking me why is there no 3?

Well, quite simply, 3 is neither here nor there, and I don’t want you to be neither here nor there. It’s all about taking a stand in life, right?

This way you will accomplish a lot of work in a given day and yet have time for rest recreation and for a great date.

So, ready to get started? Good. I can see you smiling already.

And here is one for the road:

“Don’t prioritize your schedule. Instead, schedule your priorities!!!”

Originally posted at Achal Rangaswamy's Blog.