Most time management philosophies revolve around proper prioritization; after all, if you can’t understand what needs to be done immediately vs. what can be delayed, you’ll always be misapplying your time. Urgent matters that must be dealt with can be brushed under the rug when no one is keeping track of forthcoming deadlines. So, consider maintaining a companywide list of your most pressing business decisions.
A businesswide commitment to deadlines is vitally important; company executives who fail to meet important commitments cannot be let off the hook. Rank-and-file workers who see such behavior will quickly learn that they don’t have to deal with urgent matters themselves when the boss doesn’t, either.
Make sure everyone in a leadership position understands how to prioritize properly. Employees who are struggling to climb the corporate ladder can be frustrated by managers who don’t know how to prioritize their work, so workers should study how to prioritize if their leaders don’t know how to.
Company leaders should always be prepared to step in and help employees prioritize when they’re struggling with a huge workload. Managers can only be effective when they meddle for the better. But make sure you’re not over-analyzing the schedules of each of your workers and micromanaging their every move.
Personalization is imperative to the success of time management. It’s important to understand that not everyone prioritizes work-related goals the same. Different workers may employ different time management philosophies. It’s crucial to understand what unique approach you need to embrace. Learn how to take a personal approach to keeping close track of your minutes, and you’ll be achieving more in no time.
Don’t Let Time Management Become a Stressor
Despite how important it is to closely manage your time, it’s also true that time management can become a serious stressor if you’re not doing it properly. Far too many workers drive themselves to the brink of insanity by keeping a close track of each second as it passes, when in reality all you need to do is have an understandable schedule and a realistic list of priorities. For instance, effective time management that reaches into your personal life shouldn’t dictate your free time too much. Closely choreographing your blissful moments of relaxation is just another way of overworking yourself outside the office.
The important takeaway here is that time management is a vital part of success in the modern business world, yet can’t be trusted to entirely dictate your life. You always need to leave yourself an unscheduled block of free time that can be used to do whatever you want—maybe it’s catching up on work, a favorite TV show, or the list of household chores you’ve been ignoring for too long. Whatever it is, having some time to “take care of the little things” in your life and forget about the hectic world of your workplace is an important part of staying productive when you’re in the office. Time is the most important resource in business precisely because it determines everything else. If you’re not carefully balancing your vacation time with your work time, you’ll soon find both have been frivolously wasted.
A major part of refusing to let time management become a stressor in your life is learning to focus on the business tasks that are important, rather than just those that are urgent. Meeting important forthcoming deadlines is important, and you should never deliberately ignore a timeline you’d put together in the past. But part of being an expert at time management is understanding that you need to retain a certain degree of flexibility to react to important issues as they arise.
Focus on What’s Important
Perhaps the most vital lesson you can learn when it comes to managing your time wisely is that not everything that is urgent is important and vice versa. Sometimes you’ll need to take care of an issue immediately but will find it to be of trivial importance. Elsewhere you’ll encounter decisions of chief importance to your company that can technically be put off for days, weeks, or even months. Learning to properly categorize your duties and incoming projects so you’re more aware of what’s important vs. what’s urgent is the final step of becoming a time management guru.
Read up on how to schedule important tasks vs. urgent ones, and you’ll quickly see that the common elements of flexibility and prioritization turn up anywhere that time management is mentioned. If you refuse to allow anxiety to take hold of you and instead focus on the most pressing issues, you’ll soon discover time management is much easier than you imagined. The largest corporations and the smallest mom-and-pop shops alike must make proper use of their time if they want to succeed—and you’re no different. Pay close attention to how you’re spending your precious time and take some extra steps to more cautiously chart out your days, and your business will soon be thriving.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Power Over Problems
Dr. Norman Vincent Peale
Dr. Norman Vincent Peale was a minister who spent more than 50 years at the Marble Collegiate Church in New York City until his death in 1993 at age 95. Dr. Peale was also a bestselling author, whose themes radiated around the power of positive thinking.
One of Peale’s books, The Power of Positive Thinking, was first published in 1960 and is still popular today. It has sold over 7 million copies, and has been published in 15 languages. In this essay, Peale addresses the proverbial elephant in the room—your problems. From big ones to small ones, problems can take over your entire existence until you can’t focus on anything BUT them. But to disarm the power of the problem, Peale suggests that you put them in context and remind yourself that you—not your problems—have more power in the situation.
START BY CONNECTING WITH OTHERS
I was in Sydney, Australia, speaking to this big convention of Rotarians, and I was the last speaker on the last day of a four-day convention. I spoke from 11:00 to 12:00 in the closing morning [session]. Ahead of me, from 10:00 to 11:00, was a man who was said to be the greatest economist in Australia. And he was pretty dull, really. He was using dull material, and he didn’t lighten it up all that much. But he had a technique for holding the audience, which I thought was good. He’d give about 14 minutes of dull material and then he would put in a terrific story. Now none of these stories had any relevance at all to the subject matter, but the audience listened intently through the dull material, until his terrific story would come up.
And one of the stories he told was this one: He said that a professor of psychology went before his class one morning and he looked the boys over and he said, “Gentlemen, Elizabeth II is queen of Great Britain, Jimmy Carter is president of the United States, Hirohito is emperor of Japan. How old am I?” A dead silence fell until a boy in the rear of the room put up his hand and he said, “Professor, you are 44.” The professor was astounded. He said, “I am 44, but by what process of logical deduction did you arrive at the fact that I am 44 years of age?” The boy said, “Well, you see, sir, it wasn’t all that hard. I have a brother who is in the state insane asylum. He is 22, and you are twice as crazy as he is.”
So maybe that’s the way it is. But anyway, I want to tell you that you and I are a part of a very historic occasion. I’ve been going all up and down the country for a good many years, speaking to sales rallies and motivational meetings, and in all that time, and I’ve spoken I think to some of the largest, this is by all odds the greatest motivational meeting ever put on in the United States of America. And it is due to this gentleman who comes up here and interrupts me periodically, my old and dear friend, W. Clement Stone, and to the president of Success Unlimited Magazine, Dwight Chapin, and his associate, Ron Walker.
Only the other day, I read one of the greatest human-interest stories that I have ever seen in all my reading experience. It is the story of the indomitable victory of a human being. It’s the story of the fight to survive and to make a contribution against cancer by the senator from this state, Hubert Humphrey. And I suggest that somehow you get hold of that magazine and read that story and keep it in your files when adversity may come to you.
GROWING POSITIVELY THROUGH PROBLEM
S
I would like to say to you, from a good long experience, that one minute of time can change our lives from failure to success, from unhappiness to happiness, from sickness to health, whatever the need may be.
One night about three years ago, I was speaking to some three or four thousand sales personnel in a big hall in Cleveland, Ohio. On the way down to the meeting, my taxi cab stopped for a red light. It was a cold, blustery, winter night with a high wind. Across the street from my taxi cab was a gasoline station, and over it was stretched a huge banner advertising some kind of motor oil. And the legend on the banner was this: “A clean engine always delivers power.” And I thought to myself that will be my text for the meeting tonight.
So I went down there and I drew a connection between a motor engine and that infinitely greater engine known as the human mind and pointed out to the people present that if the human mind is filled with negativisms, with inferior feelings, with inadequate attitudes, with self-doubt, with hate, with resentment, and every other evil thing, how in the world can you expect that the potential power can get through such a mind? And I said, “I don’t know who is sitting out here in front of me, but if this description corresponds to you, I’ll tell you what you do, sitting right there in that seat. Have a talk with yourself. Be honest with yourself.”
I had no sooner got back stage until a big, hulking fellow about 6’ 2” came rushing back. He threw his arms around me. He pounded me on the back, and he said, “Boy, do I like you.”
“Well,” I said, “I like you, but let’s not be so vociferous about it.” I said, “How come you’re so enthusiastic?”
He said, “When you gave that description about an unclean mental motor, you were talking exactly about me. I have been a failure as a husband, as a father, and as a salesman. But I did what you said, right out there in this meeting this afternoon. And I want to tell you something,” and he looked at me with a look of wonder on his face. He said, “I have been set free from my fears, from my inferiority, and from my self-doubt, and watch me from now on.”
And I have been watching him. He has become a very highly successful, constructive individual. Now one thing is sure. Nobody needs to go through life remaining the way he is or she is, if you shouldn’t be that way or if you don’t want to be that way. So now here’s the thing, the thing that the positive thinker excels in. The positive thinker gets positive results because he or she, the positive thinker, is not afraid of nor baffled by that thing known as a problem.
Now I realize that whenever you mention the word problem, the assumption is that you’re dealing with something, which in its very nature is inherently bad and ought to be gotten rid of. But nothing could be further from the truth; a problem is and certainly can be inherently good. Every problem contains the seeds of its own solution. And it’s out of the problem that the positive thinker grows strong.
ENTREPRENEUR TIP
Do you only see problems? Maybe it’s time to reframe how you think about life’s challenges. Start with work, a place where it’s probably not hard to identify a few problems. Instead of thinking of those problems as hurdles to success, think of them as opportunities for change. Try this: each day, write down one or two problems you might be facing. Then, jot down two to three ways you can turn those into positive outcomes.
PROBLEMS ARE PART OF LIFE
Yet wherever I go, it seems that people don’t like problems. Well, I don’t like them too much myself. But they say to me, in effect at least, wouldn’t life be simply wonderful if either we had fewer problems or easier problems or better still, no problems whatsoever. Now that’s what they say to me.
Would you really and would I really be better off if we had fewer problems or easier problems or no problems at all? Let me answer that question by telling you of an incident. I was walking down 5th Avenue not so long ago, when I saw approaching me a friend of mine by the name of George. It was evident from George’s melancholy and disconsonant demeanor that he wasn’t what you might say filled to overflowing with the ecstasy and exuberance of human existence, which is a high-class way of saying that George was dragging bottom. He was really low.
Well, this excited my natural curiosity, so I asked him, “How are you, George?” Now, when you get right down to it, that’s nothing but a routine inquiry, but it represented an enormous mistake on my part. George spent 15 minutes enlightening me meticulously on how badly he felt. And the more he talked, the worse I felt. So finally, I said to him, “Well, George, what seems to be agitating you; what’s got you so upset?” This really set him off.
“Oh,” he said, “it’s these problems, problems, nothing but problems. I am fed up with problems.” And he got so exercised about the matter that he quite forgot who he was talking to and he began to castigate these problems vitriolically, using in the process thereof, I’m sorry to say, a great many theological terms, though he didn’t put them together in a theological manner. But I knew what he meant, for he had what the super erudite call a power to communicate.
And I said, “George, I get the idea you’re fed up with your problems.”
He said, “Norman, you will be my friend for life, if you tell me how to get rid of my problems.”
I said, “Alright, I’ll try that.” But I said, “George, let’s get it straight. How many problems do you want to get rid of? Would you like to get rid of a few of them or maybe the most difficult of them?” And I said, “You’re not going to stand here on the street this afternoon, are you, and tell me that you want to get rid of all of your problems?”
He says, “The latter is the case. I have had it.”
“Oh,” I said, “I think I can help you.” I said, “George, the other day I was up in the northern part of New York City, in the Bronx, on professional business, if I may thus describe it. And I was in an area up there where the head man told me that by actual count, there were 150,000 people and not a single one of them had a problem.”
The first enthusiasm I’d seen in George manifested itself as he says with considerable eagerness, “Boy, that’s for me, lead me to this place.”
I said, “OK, you asked for it; it’s Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.” And this is a fact: Nobody in Woodlawn has a problem. They couldn’t care less what you and I will hear on television today. They have no problems at all, but they are dead. It follows, therefore, in logical sequence that problems constitute a sign of life.
Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the more problems you have, the more alive you are. An individual who has, let’s say, ten good old, tough problems is twice as alive as the poor, miserable, apathetic character who only has five problems. And if you have no problems at all, I warn you, you’re on the way out and you don’t know it. And what you better do is to head for home and go to your room and shut the door and get down on your knees and pray to the Lord and say to the Lord, Lord, look, please, what’s the matter, don’t you trust me anymore, give me some problems.
IT’S ALL ABOUT ATTITUDE
I don’t really believe anybody can be mentally healthy who doesn’t take some such attitude as that about a problem. If you want to know whether or not you’re mentally unhealthy, you might ask what your reaction is when a tough problem comes along. Do you say, “Why do I get put on like this? I can’t handle it. I haven’t got what it takes.” Then you can pretty well think maybe you’re not very healthy-minded. But if on the other hand, you look at the problem and you say, “I can handle any old problem that ever comes up to me in this life.”
I would certainly like to hope that you, looking up in the clear, blue heavens would say to yourself, “I believe in myself.” And then the next thing is to have a creative attitude, because nobody will ever attain anything other than the attitude that you have. If you have an attitude of defeat, you will suffer defeat. If you have an attitude of achievement, you will experience achievement.
Once I was speaking to the Ohio State Newspaper Association. And I sat all evening beside a wonderful man. I am a great spor
ts fan. I read the sport pages of the newspapers every day before I read the front pages, because when you read the sport pages, you can stand the front pages.
Well, at any rate, this man I was sitting next to was named Jesse Owens, who has been said by some sport writers to be the most supreme athlete ever developed in the United States. Well, I said to him, “Mr. Owens, I would like for you to tell me how you became what you are.”
Well, he was modest, and he disclaimed it, but he said, “I’ll tell you how I did what I did.” He said, “I was born in Cleveland of a family that was materially poor, but spiritually rich; which, if you ask me, is quite a combination.” He said, “I was a slender, little, slim, skinny, scrawny kid. I was not very strong, and I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life.” But one day, he said, they had an assembly in the school of about a thousand kids. And the speaker on that occasion was a man named Charlie Paddock, who in his time was hailed by sports writers as the fastest human being alive. But now Mr. Paddock had become older, and he was going around speaking to audiences of youth. So, he came out there that day in front of this great crowd and he looked them all over. And he said to them, “Do you know who you are? Well, I’m going to tell you who you are. You can do or be anything you want to be, if you know what it is that you want to be, and if you have the attitude that you can do it, and if you put the image of your goal in your mind, and if you give it all you’ve got.”
Well, little Jesse Owens was sitting down on a front seat. He tells me that immediately he knew exactly what he wanted to be, what he was going to be. He saw the image of it in his mind, right up there in his conscious mind, and he could hardly wait until Paddock finished speaking. And he rushed up and grabbed him by the hands, and he said he could feel an electric impulse pass through his entire body. And then he ran into the coach and he said, “Coach, I know what I want to do. I know what I’m going to be. I’ve got a dream. I’m going to be the next Charlie Paddock. I’m going to be the fastest human being alive. I’ve got a dream.”
Napoleon Hill's Success Masters Page 17