You might remember the earlier which I had quoted in which I mentioned the farmer,
a jailbird and the couple in love. It might have been difficult to figure
out the differences behind the same concept of time applied to three different
instances. In order to clear that up, I would like to introduce you to two
people. The first person is Ben and the second person is Bob. Please say
hi to Ben and Bob. Ben and Bob say hi to you reader.
Time Management Requirements for Busy Professionals With Full Lives
Right, now that you have
said hi to one another let me proceed to tell you a little more about these
two fine gentlemen. Ben lives in the city. He works as
a Market Analyst for a firm called @$#& Oops! For privacy reasons, Ben
has asked me not to reveal the name of his company. Well, I guess that that's
ok with us Ben. We aren't too nosy are we? So getting on with Ben, Ben
loves his job and he is one of the best in his field.
He has an office on the
56th floor of one of those skyscrapers down town. In
fact, even if he takes an elevator, it would take him a good 2 minutes to
reach his floor. I need not say that Ben has a very busy life. He does
a lot of running
around, he does market surveys, he doesn't do it directly; he has people
to do the dirty work for him. But still he does a lot of running around and
he is on his toes all day long. No he is not a ballet dancer; that was just
a figure
of speech that I used to tell you how busy he is. So let's take a closer
look at Ben's life without appearing nosy.
Ding-a-ling-a-ling! That's bens
alarm clock gone off at 6 in the morning and Ben is up already. Just
look at him, though he is in his…well…underwear,
he still looks as large as life and as right as rain. What makes a man all
perked up than a good night's sleep. There, Ben is already out of the bathroom
and he has put on a track suit. At half past six, he is already in his car
and
heading for the gym.
I forgot to tell you that Ben is one hell of a looker
and is very conscious about his trim body. And in order to keep it that
way he works out in the
gym every
single day and that too for an hour. So that means at quarter to eight
he is on his way back home. There is a fifteen minute drive from his
apartment
to
the gym. At 8.15 he has had a shower and dressed and is going down the
elevator holding
his morning paper in his hand. His office is only a ten minute drive from
his apartment but at this rush hour, the traffic just crawls. So Ben chooses
to
use his electric razor in the car while he is driving, dangerous though
it may seem.
Did you really think a man could have a shave and a shower in just 15 minutes?
Well, think again. And so the traffic crawls on and Ben reaches his office
at ten minutes to nine.
There is hardly time for him to grab a bite to
eat, so what he does is that he runs to the cafeteria and gets a sandwich
and coffee. The coffee
he manages
to
gulp down but the sandwich remains in its wrapper as he notices an interesting
article in the newspaper that was still tucked away under his arm. He
reads it in the elevator on his way up and reaches his office just in
time for
his secretary
to tell him that there is important meeting for him with the Board Members
within half an hour. Ben suddenly realizes that the meeting is about
some projects that
he had done but the paper work was in no way complete.
There is something
like a whirlwind in the office as Ben and his secretary strain themselves
to get things done and finally just in the nick of
time, Ben is able
to walk into the Board room with the necessary documents with which
Ben is in no way satisfied. It happens with most last minute jobs you
know.
The meeting goes on till noon, you know how people love to talk,
and Ben leaves the room with a lot of praises and even more new assignments.
He
has had one
more coffee, but the sandwich that he had ordered is now fit for
the waste bin. And mind you this is the third time this week that Ben
missed
breakfast.
Just
before noon Ben gets a seemingly endless number of calls from this
agent and then that. Oh yes his secretary had been screening the
calls, you
should see
the number of calls that she didn't send his way.
At last by half past two Ben leaves his office and makes a beeline
to the cafeteria. Just as he takes a big bite out of his monster
burger, his cell
phone beeps.
He answers the call to find out that it is a call from a very important
client whom he had been trying to fix an appointment with.
The client
had agreed for an appointment which was to be had immediately. Out
rushes Ben and into the waste bin goes his burger. The meeting
turned out to
better than he expected and a beaming Ben returns to his office
and sits down to a host of pending paper work which keeps him occupied
till seven
in the
evening. At half past seven he remembers his date with Kellie and
though he rushes to
the spot, he reaches there half an hour late and goes home without
meeting Kellie and with an empty stomach and a weary body. So much
for working
out and being
health conscious!
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Time Management Requirements for People With Slower Lives
Now that you are acquainted with Ben I would like you to meet Bob.
Bob lives in the country. He has a farm. It is not a very big farm;
it is
one of those
medium sized farms from which you can get enough produce to make
both ends meet. Bob is up at when the cock crows at five in the
morning. As soon
as he is up,
he goes to his dairy and milks his three cows. I must add that
Bob does not walk, he ambles. Having milked the cows he heads back
to
the
farm
and sits
down with
his morning paper. He chats leisurely with his wife who is going
about her daily business. Around 8 he hops into his tractor and
drives to
the nearby
dairy to
deliver the milk. There he meets a couple of his friends and spends
a good half hour exchanging news with them. He gets back to the
farm at
nine and
has a relaxed
breakfast.
When breakfast is over, he puts on his straw-hat and
taking his dog along starts his daily excursion among his cornfields.
His
corn has
a couple
a weeks to
go before harvest and now there is nothing much to do but walk
around inspecting the rat traps. At eleven he is back at the
farm and settles
down to listen
to
his radio playing some old favorite tunes. He has lunch at 1
and then settles down in his favorite chair for a long afternoon siesta.
In
the evening
he again goes to milk his cows, gives them some fresh feed and
has one more
walk around
the farm.
After dinner by seven, by eight he is in bed and the
lights are out.
Let's admit it, Bobs life is so leisurely that we feel like screaming
when we watch the pace at which he gets along. He is happy and
contented and
the only clock in his farm stopped ticking a few years ago. We
cannot even draw
a parallel
line between the lives of Bob and Ben. They are two worlds apart.
The point I was trying to drive home is that it is our life style
that
decides how
much time
we have for each thing. The way we live and what we do decides
how we spend our time and how much time we have to spend. We
choose our
life
styles
and that decides
what we do with our time and that is why I said that we live
in our own Time cages.
(Psst... I do not think there are many Bobs alive
in the world today.)
So what kind of life do you live? We, that is most of us live
in a world of aero planes, and jets, and fast cars and supercomputers
and
elevators
and escalators,
and electric trains and a thousand more contraptions and machines
that are all
intended to save time and do things faster.
Yeah, yeah we talk
about convenience, but the fact is that all these machines were the
result of man's endeavor to get things
done faster.
And the result
is that life moves so fast that we could get dizzy if we were
to take a minute break and just look around at all the people
whizzing
around
in
the daily
business called life.
Twenty four hours is hardly enough for
us to finish a day's work. And so what most working people do is that
they start
compromising
on the
other
seemingly not so important thing like eating and getting
eight hours sleep in the night.
And so we have such a large number of people suffering from
stress related diseases like ulcers, high blood pressure
and heart problems.
We cannot do much about the life style that
we have chosen. It's is simply impossible that we suddenly decide to
take a
break,
quit the
job, go
to the country and live like Bob on his farm. For one thing,
there are not
that
many farms in
the country and for a second thing, most of us would die
like fishes out of water if we were to settle down in the country.
After all,
how many
of us know
how
to milk a cow?
The Meaning of Managing our Time Wisely
What does that mean, are we all doomed to suffer
as ulcer patients and blood pressure patients? Far from it; if we
are able to
manage our
time effectively
we ca live
a city life that is as enjoyable and comfortable as Bob's
life in the country. And that is the purpose of this book.
But that is not all. The main purpose of this book is to help you manage
your time better so that you can become
more productive
and bring a
lot of organizing
into your life. You will be surprised to find out how
much one can do provided one has the time for it and one can
have the
time
only
if ones
time is
organized and managed well.
So if you must build yourself
a Time cage, go ahead and do so but make sure you make it big enough
so that you
have
time for
every
thing and
do not feel
all
cramped and cluttered in a single celled prison. |