Time Management & Picking Up Boxes
An article by Jim Connolly
In my 20 years of research into personal and professional development, I have uncovered an alarming trend! Many valuable yet simple ideas, processes and techniques have been massively over-complicated and transformed into long, drawn-out seminars, audio series and books.

'Time Management' is the subject which, in my honest and humble opinion, is the biggest culprit in this over complication of the basics! I will leave it to you to decide why this simple subject has been transformed into lucrative 'courses'.

The essentials of time management are so simple to understand that anyone can learn them in a few minutes. These essentials cover 95% of everything anyone really needs to know; in order to get things done. So, in this brief article, I am going to give you, for FREE, the essentials of time management - as used by every successful person I know!

The over complication of time management in; courses, books and audio programmes reminds me of a story relayed to me by one of the delegates on my Results Seminar. He told me how he was sent by his employer on a Health and Safety course where the 'Trainer' spoke for almost half an hour on how to pick up- a box! Yep, this chap took nearly 30 minutes to tell a group of intelligent people that they needed to check the weight and condition of a box, before bending their legs and keeping their back straight to lift it.

NONE of the self-made millionaires or successful people I know waste their time and energy on the ridiculously onerous and over-complicated time management methodologies that have flooded the professional development market. Equally, I have never seen them carting around those daft looking time planners (they are too busy to waste their time on this rubbish - they have a successful life to live!)

The essence of time management is so simple that it can be summed-up in just three words:
1. LIST
2. PRIORITISE
3. ACTION

Here's how it works:
List everything you need to do on a piece of paper.

Prioritise everything on the list by scoring each item with a 1, 2 or 3. 3=very important, 2=less important, 1=not important.

Action all the 3 items, then your 2 items & then your 1 items. Roll-over any unfinished items onto the next list & increase the number if necessary.

The key here is to take action on your number 3 items regularly.

In my experience, most time management issues are actually self-motivation issues.   People get bogged down with ever-increasing lists of things to do simply because they fail to take action on a regular enough basis. This means that their list of things to do gets longer and longer and they feel more and more stressed. So, they buy the next time management book or attend another course until they finally realise they are being ripped-off! The answer is to list, prioritise and act – there’s no hidden treasure here!

Fortunately, when you have a list of things to do, and that list has been prioritised, and you then start off doing the most important things, time management ceases to become an issue.

If you are ever not sure what you should be doing at any point in the day, just ask yourself this simple question; "what could I be doing right now, that would be more productive than this?" If the answer is an activity other then the one you are engaged in - DO IT!  Simple eh?

To your success,

Jim Connolly
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