Time - One of The Three Most Precious Resources
- Elmen Lamprecht
- 18 hours ago
- 10 min read
“A warrior must learn to make every second count, since he is going to be here in this world for only a short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it” – Carlos Castaneda.
Without a doubt, time is your most precious resource. With time, you can gain wealth and regain your health, but there is no treasure in the world and no power potent enough to regain the time you have lost. Every second that passes is one second less that you have available to turn your dreams into reality. That is the bad news. The good news is that no matter how terrible yesterday was, every day presents a brand-new opportunity of 24 hours to use to the fullest. Since every person has exactly the same amount of time every day, you can learn to optimize your time to become as productive as the best and brightest amongst us. Consider what Christopher Rice said: “Every day is a bank account, and time is our currency. No one is rich, no one is poor, we’ve got 24 hours each.”
Obviously, to be successful and live your purposes, you must make the best of the time given to you, but optimizing your time is not simply about doing more, being busier. To make every second count involves being more focused on doing the right things right, and not just trying to be active every second. You could be very busy and still waste your time. Activity is not equal to productivity. Productivity is more than just the quantity of work. It is also the quality.
Ensuring you maximize the 24 hours of every day requires you to:
Do the right things, and
Do them at the right time.
Doing the right things is a matter of Living with Intent and purpose driven goal-setting. Doing them at the right time is a matter of time-management. In my book “The Daily Life of Resolute Beings”, we discuss seven time-management behaviours is detail. Time management is the skill to allocate the right amount of time for each particular activity that takes you towards your particular goals. In this blog, we will unpack the first time-management behaviour, namely creating a To-Do List.
Time Management Behaviour 1: Create a To-Do List
In its simplest form, To-Lo lists are a set of tasks (daily, weekly, monthly) that you must complete to reach your micro-goals. In other words, it is the next step in breaking up your micro-goals into small tasks that you can complete in the short term. Also, it represents tasks that must be completed to successfully navigate our normal, daily life.
The first and most simple task in creating a To-Do list is to create an extensive, all-inclusive list of the tasks you need to complete in the short term to reach out goals and micro-goals. Do this during the organization-time allocated in your daily planner (to be discussed later). Take a look at your micro-goals and identify the tasks that you need to complete to reach these goals. You will most probably have two types of tasks: small quick tasks that can be done in one day and longer, more complex tasks that might take multiple days to complete. Break the more complex tasks into simpler, easier to complete tasks.
This is the easy part – creating the list of tasks. The part that really takes skill and experience is prioritizing these tasks. To help you master task prioritizing, let’s investigate three methods you could employ.
Prioritization method 1: The Eisenhower Matrix Method
The Eisenhower matrix is named after President Eisenhower who championed this technique for his decision-making. It is a method of ranking your tasks based on their importance and urgency. Any task that takes you closer to your personal Intent (your destiny) is important. These are the tasks that will add value to your life-goals when completed. Tasks that do not take you closer to your purpose are not important. When it comes to urgency, any task that will have an immediate impact if they are NOT completed is seen as urgent. When the completion of a task can wait or be postponed to another date, it decreases in urgency.
Logically, tasks fall in a continuum on both these factors, but since the characteristics of tasks are often unique, it makes prioritization very difficult. It is up to you to determine the level of importance and urgency as they relate to your unique circumstances. Once you have allocated the importance and urgency to a task, use the matrix below to guide your decision-making around prioritization.
The Eisenhower Method guides task prioritization based on four quadrants.
Important and Urgent Tasks: These are tasks that will bring you closer to your personal intent but due to neglect or environmental matters, have reached crisis levels and become extremely time-sensitive. These tasks must be completed first. To optimize your time, you need to spend less time in this quadrant and more time in the green quadrant.
Important and Non-Urgent Tasks: These tasks strengthen your purpose, but you have more time to complete them. There is no crisis here, allowing you the freedom to work hard and smart to complete them at a higher quality. You can be more strategic and creative in working on these tasks. Spend as much time as you can in this quadrant because tasks here will have the biggest impact on your life-goals.
Unimportant and Urgent Tasks: The original Eisenhower Matrix dedicates this quadrant to ‘delegation’. In a corporate environment, you might have the luxury of delegating these tasks to other people in your team. In your personal life, you might not be able to delegate these tasks. Do these tasks in the daily time slots you have allocated for admin tasks. Be aware that the urgency of these tasks doesn’t suck you into a whirlpool of waste because they do not add real value.
Unimportant and Non-Urgent Tasks: These tasks clutter your daily schedule, so be strict to avoid and ignore these tasks. Over time, they will either simply fall away since they are not important anyway, or they will move to the orange quadrant and you can deal with them during your daily admin.
Prioritization method 2: The Ivy Lee Method
The second prioritization technique, developed by productivity consultant Ivy Lee in the 1920s, is all about creating a manageable, ranked to-do list and committing to it until all the tasks are complete. The power lies in its simplicity and forcing you to make tough decisions to optimize your time. This is how the Ivy Lee method works:
Step 1: List and Rank: At the end of each day, create a list of all the tasks you still need to complete and then rank them in terms of importance. Then take the top 6 tasks and only add them to your to-do list. If you’re having trouble streamlining your task list, really think about what you need to get done. If some tasks can be completed later in the week, keep them off your to-do list. The goal here is to be ruthless with your time by making tough decisions about what is really important.
Step 2: Commit and Complete: In the morning, start work on the first task. Only when that task is complete, move on to the second. Keep going until the end of the workday, working on a single task at a time. The true Ivy Lee method forces you to focus on only one task at a time. My opinion is that optimizing time sometimes requires you to start another task before the previous task is complete. For example, maybe you couldn’t reach someone that you must have an important discussion with. In this case, it’s good to leave a message (email/text) and move on to the next task while you wait for them to return your call or email. As long as you drop everything else the moment that call/email comes through. What the Ivy Lee method does well is force you to be disciplined. Very often we get too distracted by small ‘emergencies’ that we never complete our important tasks.
Step 3: Rinse and Repeat: At the end of the day, move any unfinished tasks to the top of tomorrow’s list and start again.
Prioritization method 3: The Warren Buffet 5/25 Method
“The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.” – Warren Buffet
While this method is brilliant in helping you rank your priorities, it is more helpful in ranking your long-term goals (e.g., 12-month to 5-year goals) than your daily tasks. Nevertheless, this is a phenomenal tool for helping you focus on your most valued aims, the life pursuits that are in line with your personal Intent.
The story behind the 5/25 rule is that it sprung from a conversation between Warren Buffet and his personal pilot, Mike Flint – who also served as a pilot for four US presidents on Air Force One. Flint asked for career advice, and Buffet instructed him to write down 25 personal priorities. In terms of the Resolute Life, this would be all the 5-year and 12-month goals you have identified via the Resolute Goal Setting Matrix. Once Flint identified his 25 goals, Buffet told him to circle the 5 most important items. In the end, the pilot now had two lists: the list of 25 (he called it the B-list) and the top 5 goals (called the A-list). Once done, Buffet told Flint: “Everything you didn’t circle just became your Avoid-At-All-Cost list.”
This ruthless prioritization is characteristic of Buffett’s business philosophy. The basis of the rule is as much about what you do with the 20 B-List goals (avoid them) as it is about what to do about the top 5 A-List goals. It is more about saying no than saying yes. Through the 5/25 method, you end up with a To-Do list and a “Not-To-Do” list, reminding us to be brutal in removing distractions to optimize our time. The most productive people are those who focus all their time on the few things that will have an outsized impact on their life. And once complete, find new outsized tasks to complete.
Use a Mixture of These Methods for Your Unique Needs
One of the key characteristics of the Resolute Life is the creation of unique solutions to suit your unique personal journey. Task-prioritization presents a great opportunity to use different approaches to develop the best decision-making method for you.
Perhaps use the 5/25 rule once a quarter (or once per year) to review and reprioritize your long-term goals. This gives you the opportunity to clear your awareness and make sure that you are investing your resources into the goals that will have the biggest impact on your life. Then, on a weekly basis, use the Eisenhower method to create your weekly to-do list, ranking your tasks on the importance/urgency continuums. Once you have sorted the tasks into the four quadrants, use the Ivy Lee method to help your daily focus.
In other words, use the 5/25 rule once per quarter, then the Eisenhower method once per week, and then the Ivy Lee method every day. This works for me personally. You might find a better way to use these methods, or you might discover other productivity enhancement methods that suit you better. As long as you optimize your time through a prioritized to-do list, use any method that works for you.
Some Tips About Prioritization
Have a Weekly and Daily To-Do List: At the start of the first day of the week, identify the major tasks that need to be completed for the week and then identify the tasks you need to complete for that day. Review your progress on the weekly to-do list at the start of every day.
Be Ruthless with Your Time: You absolutely must cut all distractions from your life. When you need to focus and work hard, focus and work hard. When you need to rest, relax and have fun, do that at full tilt. But never allow anything to interrupt you when you are productive. Say no more times than you say yes.
Don’t Inflate the Importance of Things You Like to Do: When we like doing something, it is easy to spend a lot of time doing it. To justify our time spent on activities that we like, we risk believing that they are more important than other activities. In most cases, the things you love to do will take you closer to your goals since they will probably be aligned with your abilities, interests and Personal Intent. But they might not be important or urgent at that point in time. Avoid creating stress for yourself by planning to do the less important things you love later and focus on the urgent and important things now.
Eat the Frog: Brian Tracy developed the Eat the Frog method to boost productivity. Fundamentally, it is about avoiding procrastination by doing the hardest (or most hated) task first. Tracy names this method after a quote from Mark Twain: “If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first.” This rule tells you to do the things you hate first. Procrastination is the most potent thief of time. Be careful not to demote the importance of the things you hate. Sometimes there are things that you hate to do, but they can have a big impact on your life (e.g., having that difficult conversation with your boss; doing exercises for the first time; saving money).
Group Similar Tasks Together: To improve the flow of your work, try to group similar tasks together. By grouping activities, you are more efficient and get more done in the same amount of time. For example: Let’s say you are a sales professional. Your job is to engage with clients and complete the administration related to sales. Now, you can engage with one client at a time where you call or email a client, jump into your car to visit them, then come back to the office after the meeting to complete the admin, and then start with the next client (call/email, visit, office, admin). I venture you would be able to engage with three clients per day, at most. But if you call/email a couple of clients, then jump in your car to see a few of them, then come back to the office to complete admin for all your client visits, you could probably engage with six clients or more per day.
Cross Off the Tasks That You Have Completed from Your List: It is a great morale booster every time you remove something from your to-do list. There is something motivational about the physical act of crossing off a task from your list. It makes you feel good about yourself and your accomplishments. The result is that you feel more energized and motivated to tackle the other tasks still on the list. The sense of accomplishment will drive you to accomplish even more.
In conclusion, mastering time management is an essential skill for anyone who wants to lead a productive and fulfilling life. By adopting and personalizing the time-management behaviour of Prioritization, you can make the most of your precious time and achieve your goals with greater efficiency and satisfaction. Remember, it's not about being busy but about being productive and focusing on what truly matters.
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