I have always been particular about time even though that have not stopped me from reporting late at some events. I have always tried to instill the discipline of time management in my students by always reporting for lectures on time.

However, there have been some few instances where I report late to the surprise of my students. Some of the students will be like, sir, you are unusually late today, what happened?

I will give one reason or the other which in my view is just an excuse. It sounds ironic that despite my discipline towards time, I still sometimes miss my schedules.

A number of authors have written articles on how to help their readers find some extra hour in the day. The idea is that we’ll shave bits of time off everyday activities, add it up, and we’ll have time for the good stuff. It sounds simple but the reality is different. Some authors will say that if you need 30 minutes of exercise every day, just reduce watching television by say two hours a day. After reading the views of a lot of professionals who have studied the schedules of some of the busiest people in the world, it is clear that this idea is backward. We do not build the lives we want by saving time. We build the lives we want and the time saves itself.

So imagine the life of a busy person who work all day and closes after 8pm. Get home around 10pm and had to report to the office the following day at 6am and that is the person routine throughout the week. If you ask that person to give you 7 hours of his/her time in a week, the person will likely tell you they are busy and cannot get time for you.

However, assuming the same person get home and his/her house is flooded as a result of a burst tap and he spend the whole nigh cleaning the room and house. The following day, he/she gets a plumber the fix the problem which take up to about 12pm before the problem is fixed.

Even though he/she was very busy, they still found time to ensure that the house is rid of water and the tap fixed. The effect of this illustration is that, time is elastic. We cannot make more time; but time will stretch to accommodate what we choose to put into it.

The key point in time management is treating our priorities like the person treated their broken tap. In simple terms, do not say I don’t have time to do x,y and z, but say I do not do x, y and z because it is not a priority. That in my view is the best way to describe the things we do not make time to do them. They are simply not part of our priorities. For instance, one can say I do not have time for dating that is why I don’t have a girlfriend or boyfriend which is not true. If you offered to pay that same person $100,000 to go on a date, the person will quickly make time for it. The above illustration clearly shows that time is also a choice.

So what do we do? Simple, we need to clearly define our priorities. Set your priorities for your professional life and your personal life. You can categorize your priorities under career, relationship and self and allocate your time across these three key areas. Other people may add religion or relationship with God if you are religious person like me. List the items under each of these areas and prioritize them. It will look harder for some than other depending on our individual schedules.

Allocate the total hours you have in a week for all these areas and discipline yourself to follow through without fail. You will realize how you can make time for all the important aspects of your life with the same hours you thought was not enough.

In conclusion, I think time management is about looking at the whole of one’s time and seeing where the good stuff can go. It’s about prioritization and choice. Even if we are busy, we have time for what matters and we focus on what matters. We can build the lives we want in the time we’ve got.