Hello everyone, this is Helen Huang @ Organizing, based in Beijing, China.In order to better learn and practice the YiXiaoNeng Time Management System, after finished publishing 100 Chinese articles, I decided to continue writing and publishing a daily English article in another 100 days based on the "YeWuBin Time Management 100 Episodes" audio program. Today is the 104th day.
Today's topic is: Life is Not About How Many, but How Much!
Today I would like to talk about an important topic, one that is very closely related to time management. What I want to say is that time cannot be managed, but you can manage yourself. By managing your habits and your actions, you can achieve the same effect as managing time. But many theories, methods or tools in the world that tell us how to improve, how to manage matters and habits.
Peter Drucker, known as the father of modern management, said about time management, "Time is man's scarce resource." He even tags time is one of the top five skills needed in an effectiveness management.
How then do we manage our time?
Drucker also said we should record and analyze each day's events, so we can manage our time better. Drucker found in his analysis that 80% of the tasks completed in a day or simple enough that they can be delegated to others, only 20% are so important and so specific that you must complete them by self.
An Italian economist named Pareto advocated the 80 / 20 principle. Stating that about 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Drucker proposes an 80 / 20 principle in time management. He thinks that we ourselves need to complete essential tasks, but not all tasks. This brings up a quote that I want to share with you now: Life lies not in how many things you complete, but completing the critical few important things with your heart and soul, and doing them to the best of your ability. This is called completing the critical few.
A time management guru, Stephen Covey, wrote a book titled "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People". You may be familiar with, but right now can you recall these 7 habits? I believe most of you may have forgotten them. I have asked numerous people in my classes. Many people will remember one or two or a few of them, but not all of them. This demonstrates that these 7 habits seem easy, but in fact they are difficult to put into use.
Stephen Covey taught us an important principle. Four quadrant of time management has a way of categorizing and prioritizing the tasks we need to accomplish at any given moment. The four quadrants of time management on important but not urgent items, important and urgent items, unimportant and non-urgent items, and unimportant but urgent items.
Both Stephen Covey and Peter Drucker stressed the importance of completing important tasks. Covey went a step further by distinguishing between urgent and non-urgent, and that stressed the importance of completing the non-urgent matters.
But what is a non-urgent matter? Simply, it means completing tasks that are not yet due. Well typically manners of today are most urgent.
Now you may understand that in fact it's planning in advance, then accomplish this. It's what we Chinese called preparedness ensures success and non-preparedness gets failure.
The key is non-urgent matters will become urgent matters if we don't complete them. By completing non-urgent matters in a timely fashion, they will no longer become urgent, and ultimately, we will eliminate non-urgent matters.
But in reality, it's hard to do this. Why? Because this concept is just that it's an idea, you can expand this idea only after first categorized the urgent and non-urgent items, and then by prioritized them.
Mark Twain, a famous American author once said, if the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with satisfaction of knowing. That it is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day. Frogs represent challenging matters.
There was another American, Brian Tracy. Decades ago, I listened to one of his audiotapes. He wrote a book, named "Eat That Frog", suggesting that we eat 3 frogs everyday. And remember what he's talking about is nothing more than the idea of completing important matters first. It is not easy to cultivate this habit. And let's match the idea of GTD.
The idea of GTD comes from an American by the name of David Allen. He wrote 3 books. Getting Things Done which is what GTD stands for. Getting Things Done I, II and III. I am a grateful honor these books, and I am very thankful to Mr. David Allen.
I suggest that you read and learn the knowledge contained in this set of books, including both a macro and a micro sense. They focus not only on overall situations but also on details. This is called seeing trees for the forest. The forest represents a macro knowledge, while the tree represents a micro knowledge. I will share more about this in the next session.
So today, remember, life is not about how many things you accomplished, but in doing the most important things, with this much heart and soul, and doing them to the best of your ability.
Thank you for your persistence and listening to the 100 classes of YeWuBin's opnions on Time Management. Thank you! If you feel these classes are good, please share with your friends.
Wish you have a wonderful day!
