How to Guard Your 24 Hours

Dear Leader,

I hope this meets you in great health.

As an undergraduate, I was a student of productivity. As a matter of fact, because I did more than academic work on campus, I was obsessed with managing my time so I won’t fail in any area while I was in school. I became so good at it that I began to even teach it.

I realised that my ability to maximise my time would be essential to my productivity and my effectiveness both as a student on campus and a leader. I read many books on leadership and a few of them touched on productivity.

One of my biggest lessons was that time is an equal opportunity employer. We are all bound by 24 hours, no more, no less – but not all of us get the same return on our 24 hours. Most of us just spend time, we don’t invest time. You don’t get a return on what you spend, you get a return on what you invest. Until you see time as an asset that you can trade for something valuable, you will keep spending time.

After much practice for over a decade, I agree that “time management” does not exist. I believe that you cannot really manage time because you cannot control it. Time keeps moving whether you do something or not. No matter how smart or shrewd you are, you cannot save one minute from a day to spend it on another day. You cannot also create additional minutes or buy additional seconds from a store.

The best of us all still have 24 hours.

So how do you manage that? What we should be interested in is to manage our lives by how we use our time.

If we truly believe that time is the most precious commodity on the earth, then we should decide where our time goes by continually analysing how we use our time and be sure we are getting the best use of our time.

People squander life when they do things that bring them little or no positive return.

Here is a few takeaways you should think about this week as leader:

• Be careful that you do not let just anyone spend your time for you. Ensure your time is directed towards fulfilling your vision and not the expectations of others. Protect your calendar. Guide it. Be mission minded. Your time is limited.
  
• It is not enough to be busy. What are you busy about? How do you judge whether something is a good use of your time?

Think about these! Invest your 24 hours.

I’m rooting for you,
The Great Owete