There is a passage in Alice in Wonderland where Alice reaches a fork in the road. She is unfamiliar with the territory and a big, smiling Cheshire cat is nearby. She asks the cat, "Which road do I take?" and the cat inquires, "Where do you want to go?” Alice says, "I don't know" and the Cat replies, "Then take either road."

See, if you don’t know where you are going you never know when you get there.

Good time management is not doing the wrong things quicker. It’s doing the right things in the first place.

Decide where you want to end up on the last day of your life in each of your Seven Vital Areas: health, family, financial, intellectual, social, professional, and spiritual. Then work backwards and determine what you have to do each year, month, week and day to get to where you want to arrive at the end of your life.

When you know where you’re going and what you have to do each day to get you there, you’ll automatically become a better time manager.

Expense Or Investment?

Imagine you have a weekly income of $168. You can two things with that money. You can expense it or you can invest it.

There’ll be expenses for food and housing, clothing and transportation. Maybe a little for entertainment too. But you’ll certainly want to save some of the $168 and invest it to build a nest egg, provide for emergencies and a comfortable retirement. The amount of that nest egg will be in proportion to the amount you’re able to invest throughout the years. Pretty simple. Most people understand this. The more you invest, the more you’ll have.

This dynamic occurs in the same way with your time as well.

You have 168 hours in your week. You can do two things with that time. You can expense it or you can invest it.

Watching you favorite television program, cooking a meal, and having a chat with a friend are, for the most part, expensing of time. Attending a seminar, learning something new, or developing a new business connection is, for the most part, investing of time.

If you would like to enjoy more results during your life, more productivity in each of your Seven Vital Areas, don’t spend anymore of your time, just use it differently. Take a little more from the expense side and put it into the investment side.

And a small change can make a huge difference. Just shift one hour per day from the expense side to the investment side. Maybe it’s an hour of television expense time. Maybe, instead of going out to lunch with the same people and perhaps this has become old and tired, you use that hour differently. Look how you are spending your time and find an hour of expense time that you can convert to investment time.

Now do this consistently, every day. You will rack up seven hours per week and 350 hours per year of additional investment time. The average college course is 35 classroom hours. This, then, is the equivalent of ten college classes per year, (forgetting for the moment homework and commuting).

With just one more hour per day moved over from the expense column to the investment column you can learn a couple of foreign languages over the next couple of years or new skills to insure your continued employment and promotion. You can learn to play the guitar or write your first novel.

Or do whatever you wish to improve your future, spending no more time, just spending it differently.

Published: June 17, 2003

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