Monday, 25 November 2019

Schedule Your Time and Resources

Schedule Your Time and Resources
“People who are chronically tardy (repetitively late) never understand the many ways in which they screw up the schedules of people who are punctual and 'normal' ...”

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim (a sudden wish, idea, desire). It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order; willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven (shelter) set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.”

“When someone tells you they are too 'busy' … It’s not a reflection of their schedule; it’s a reflection of your spot on their schedule.”

“Time management is all about distinguishing between what is important for you and what simply lures you into useless activities.”

“In order to build any structure, we should keep a close tab on its daily, weekly, and monthly progress. Unless we religiously follow all the steps, chances are that the structure will not meet our expectations.”

“Most people never find the time or take time out of their schedules to think about higher goals, their contribution to society, their surroundings, or the people they care about. They come into the world and depart from the world without bringing a smile to a stranger’s face.”

“Careers, like rockets, don’t always take off on schedule. The key is to keep working the engines.”

“Routine ruins the life, variety vitalize the life.”

“Make sure you understand when best you are effective and then schedule your most important tasks within that time of the day.”

“Schedule time for focused effort.”

“The best way to effectively use time is to schedule it.”

“I block in days / nights for writing where I don't touch emails or social media.”

“When you streamline your schedule by making deliberate decisions about tasks and activities that are crucially important you and identify your most important priorities, you give yourself permission to make choices that excite and interest you. You also grant yourself permission to exercise your right to say, “No, thank you.”

“Avoid hyper-scheduling yourself so you have free time to do something creative or perhaps to do nothing at all.”

“I recommend you take care of the minutes and the hours will take care of themselves.”

“To do two things at once is to do neither.” 

“You will never find time for anything. If you want time you must make it.” 

“A plan is what, a schedule is when. It takes both a plan and a schedule to get things done.” 

“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”

“If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” If it’s not working, pushing harder is not the answer.

“Take a rest. A field that has rested yields a beautiful crop.” Honor the space between things. Use down time to rejuvenate. Stop the busy work and give yourself nourishing time to simply be.

“There is more to life than increasing its speed.” How present were you for the last fifteen minutes of your life? Are you here, or are you worrying about the past or racing to finish yet another task?

“If you win the rat race, you’re still a rat.” Do you ask yourself what you want to do or what you have to do? There’s a big difference.

“Focused action beats brilliance.” Where is your action focused? Does it line up with your priorities?

“Begin with the end in mind.” Taking the time to prepare is something that gets overlooked when we get stressed or overwhelmed. It can lead to vicious cycles, a lack of results, and wasted effort, and stress eating.

“Much of the stress that people feel doesn’t come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they started.” One of the side effects of constant multitasking and “busyness” can be a lack of follow-through and completion. Loose ends and unfinished business wears us out, and lead to overwhelm, procrastination, and poor results.

“It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?” Does your day unfold from your priorities or are you chasing a to-do list?

 “You’ve got to think about big things while you’re doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.” One of the most productive things you can put in your schedule is a time to plan.

“In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.”

“Time isn't the main thing. It's the only thing.”

“What gets measured gets managed.” Nowhere is this truer than when you’re trying to get the most out of your time.

“He who every morning plans the transactions of that day and follows that plan carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth (a complicated irregular network of passages or paths in which it is difficult to find one's way) of the most busy life.”

“Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.”

“The most efficient way to live reasonably is every morning to make a plan of one’s day and every night to examine the results obtained.”

The common man is not concerned about the passage of time, the man of talent is driven by it.”

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” We all have the same 24 hours. And learning to use them to their best potential is at the core of time management. Start by tracking how you spend your time to understand where it’s going (and where it’s being wasted). Then champion morning routines, evening reviews, and setting and following daily goals.

Time management comes down to making choices. Should you spend your day in meetings or block out time to work on your more important work? Should you wake up early or hit the snooze button?

“You must vie with time’s swiftness in the speed of using it, and, as from a torrent that rushes by and will not always flow, you must drink quickly.”

“My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.” 

“You get to decide where your time goes. You can either spend it moving forward, or you can spend it putting out fires. You decide. And if you don’t decide, others will decide for you.” 

“Time = life; therefore, waste your time and waste of your life, or master your time and master your life.”

“Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week.” 

“Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday and avoiding today.”

“You may delay, but time will not.”

“A man who dares to waste one hour of life has not discovered the value of life.”

“The essence of self-discipline is to do the important thing rather than the urgent thing.”

“Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is specifically your own.” 

“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”

“Realize that now, in this moment of time, you are creating. You are creating your next moment. That is what’s real.”


Block distractions, build better habits, and take back control of your time. The goal of time management is always productivity, to get more done in less time. However, this doesn’t come down to just planning when you’ll work, but understanding the best ways how to work.

“If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I would spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.”

“Don’t be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of. One man gets only a week’s value out of a year while another man gets a full year’s value out of a week.”

“The key is in not spending time, but in investing it.” 

“Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.”

Productivity doesn’t just happen on its own. Instead, there are very specific things you need to do to be more productive.

That means becoming self-aware of what work drives the biggest results, blocking out external distractions, and optimizing your daily schedule to do the right work at the right time.

It’s always tempting to try to do more than one thing at a time. But science shows that multitasking simply isn’t an option if you want to manage your time properly.

“To do two things at once is to do neither.”

“The shorter way to do many things is to only do one thing at a time.”

“If you want to make good use of your time, you’ve got to know what’s most important and then give it all you’ve got.” 

“One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.” 

“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”

“Your future is created by what you do today, not tomorrow.” 

“It’s how we spend our time here and now, that really matters. If you are fed up with the way you have come to interact with time, change it.”

“The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.” 

“Have regular hours for work and play; make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well.”

“The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”

In our culture of more, it’s easy to forget the benefits of free time. In the effort to manage your time better, remember that not everything can or should be managed.

As old Honest Abe put it, there’s always tomorrow. And if you’re doing something you enjoy with your time off, it’s not possible you wasted it.

Time is our most precious resource. And while we can’t control its movement, we can make sure we get the most out of the time we do have.

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