24th May 2010
"Learn to use ten minutes intelligently. It will pay you huge dividends."
William A. Irwin
I am sure you have learnt some skill such as typing, cycling, swimming etc. You would have noticed that the coach teaches you how to do it in small doses. If you cycle for some distance without falling, he will leave you to learn cycling on your own since you have understood the principles involved in cycling. The same applies to any other skill.
Managing time also follows the same pattern. In fact, as I have repeatedly said, there is no such thing as `time management, nut only managing outcome or result. It's about using your time intelligently. If you know how to use the next ten minutes effectively, you should be able to manage the next ten years also effectively. Just like learning to swim ten fifty feet alone is sufficient to swim a longer distance, if you can manage ten minutes, it means that you have mastered the fine art of `time management'.
What is most important is to become conscious of how you manage each ten minutes and notice if you have applied your mind on the priorities on hand. If you do justice to every ten minutes, you don't have to worry about your ability create your own future.
Let me give one more example. Suppose you have to travel one hundred miles, as long as you travel the next ten miles in the right way, you don't have to worry about the remaining ninety miles!
Stop reading this; make a log of how you manage the blocks of ten minutes until you go to bed today. Do this exercise for a week and notice what happens to your time consciousness!
N C Sridharan
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