What is Time, Part 1

WHAT IS TIME, part 1?

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“Our costliest expenditure is time…” - Theophrastus

“Self-discipline is a key to a successful time management…” – Joshua Enyi-Christopher

Time is an essential factor in anyone’s life. What you do with it matters a lot especially when you're getting to that point when no one must tell you what to or what not to do. 

Making the most of your time requires total self-discipline, motivation, a realistic decision and time assignments to your various task. Usually, people wish for more time but even with more time, they don’t seem to use it properly. Remember you only have 24 hours, 1,440 minutes or 86,400 seconds each day. The closest comparison to time is money, just as money, time is very valuable and limited, which in the case, must be protected and spent wisely. 

It is said that people who learn and practice how to use time efficiently that is, a proper time management technique, are much productive, confident, have more energy to accomplish a task, feel less stressed and can get things done.

Before I go further, let us talk about the differences between what is important and what is urgent also how to categorize them efficiently. To understand better the differences between these two, we would use real-life examples. 

The most important task usually is not the most urgent task…

According to the Microsoft Encarta 2009. 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. The meaning of these words;

Important is having high value or significance worthy of note or consideration, especially for its interest, value, or relevance.

On the other hand,

Urgent is requiring immediate action, showing earnestness or the desire for something to be done quickly.

With that in mind, we can now deduce that urgency will override importance in certain situations. 

How do we differentiate our important task from our urgent task? 

Covey, Merrill, and Merrill (1994) categorize our activities into four quadrants in their Time Management Matrix: urgent, not urgent, important and not important.

This would be discussed in part 2. If you like this post, please comment. Thanks.