LindaOJ here again and the question I have for you in this blog post is: do you have enough time to do everything you want to?

First of all, would you like to know who invented the clock? Maybe then we can moan at them (from afar) because too many of us today are clock watchers!

Nobody actually knows the reason why the day was split into 12 hours and each hour split into 60 minutes and then each minute into 60 seconds. The best guess is that it was the Babylonians who worked out that there were 12 full moons in a year which gave them a 360 day year. They also knew the relationship between the radius of a circle and its circumference, which split the circle into six segments. Dividing this by two gave them 12 segments, which also fitted well with their religious beliefs that the number 12 had some kind of special significance. Evidently the Egyptians discovered the Meridian Line, a line joining North and South, by observing that the shortest shadow cast by the obelisk would always point in the same direction, regardless of the season.

(source)

Interesting facts and as we come back into the 21^st Century we realise that we are not the first people to spend too much time worrying about what time it is and if there is enough time left in the day to complete all of our tasks.

When I am approached for tips on how to manage all of the activities involved in being the owner of a small business, I always ask: “do you have a planner on the wall?” You might remember the blog post when I mentioned this pertaining to having a home office. So, imagine you have a planner on your office wall and you mark every appointment & task you have to complete on there, an example might be:

• Emails
• Market Research
• Meeting Clients
• Lunch
• Shopping for office supplies
• Dentist
• Conference Call
• Supper
• Family time
• Movies
• Read a book

Notice there are a few gaps left just in one day, and there is no time allotted for networking or laundry, so these should be added to your wall planner. The purpose of this exercise if you fill out one whole month is to see where you might plan your time better, or if you are on track.

I believe if you can see something (as well as being told) you have a better chance of remembering, so an alarm on your phone works well, the wall planner just compliments it.

Back to my question: Do you have enough time in the day to do everything you want to do? If your answer is yes, I am hoping you will comment on this blog post and offer us some tips! If your answer is no then when you have read my blog you might have gained a few tips to help you.

I love the quote: “work smarter, not harder”. For me, that has been a work in progress. Some days I manage to work smarter and other days I work harder; I am not perfect and neither is anyone else. But we can improve on anything if we really want to so I am still trying different ways to get better at my time management.

We tend to lose track of time for many reasons and I really like this quote because it sounds a bit like me and many other people I know:

“Anyone who has lost track of time when using a computer knows the propensity to dream, the urge to make dreams come true and the tendency to miss lunch.”
- Tim Berners-Lee

I enjoy my time browsing the Internet, whether I am reading the news, checking out information for my new book or even saying hi on the social media sites, and obviously replying and sending emails. There are times though when I get lost along the way. It could be I am working on something I am so interested in or has a tight schedule that I forget to check the clock and when I do I am amazed a couple of hours have gone by. This is when the challenges pop up. If I have spent too much time on a project that I enjoy and, in the back of my mind I know I should have been working on something else (maybe something I don’t look forward to) then I am behind in my schedule. But, for me, the joy of being the decision maker in my own business does mean I can modify my schedules to a certain degree and I manage my time in that area very well.

If I tell you how much time I spend on social media and you reply you do not have the time to do the same that is quite OK. On the other hand if you want to successfully navigate even just one social media platform you do need to invest some time in it. The trick is to spend a little bit more time in the beginning getting to know all about the task in hand, and for an example let’s use Twitter. Finding out how to use Twitter and not jumping straight in with tweets that may damage your credibility is money well spent! Remember time is money. Make time on your wall planner to build your foundations on Twitter and within a few weeks (and the time frame depends on your ability to learn) you will know how much time you need to dedicate to your tweets and it could be as little as 5 minutes or as much as half an hour.

But wall planners, alarms and calendars will not help you with your time challenges if you are not passionate about your work and dedicated to keeping your work up to date. We all get tired, lack motivation or feel we are not moving forward as fast as we would like. This is when we tend to moan and groan and can be heard to say, “there is just not enough time in the day!” We know this is not true, but it is an excuse for our inability to find the time to finish work that we find boring or are just not enjoying.

Another tip I found early on is to finish the so called boring tasks early in my day so that I feel at my best and refreshed from a good night’s sleep. The anticipation I feel knowing that once I have completed the mundane jobs then I can move on to my passion, which for me could be writing or speaking. If we put off these jobs unfortunately we will feel tired and lethargic and, once again, use the excuse there is not enough time in the day.

Watching the clock is another dangerous move. I know that feeling, when I am looking forward to lunch with someone and the morning is going so slow, looking at the clock and the hands are moving really slow and then you check your computer clock and that is exactly the same time as the clock on your wall. I don’t have a clock anywhere in sight when I am working, other than on my laptop. If I fall into the trap of clock watching I know it’s time to get up, walk around, have a coffee or juice and then I find the discipline to finish the task in hand, knowing my reward is lunch with someone whose company I enjoy.

What happens if we are working on a project and for some reason we are a few days overdue, maybe it is our clients fault, they kept on changing their mind about what they wanted us to do? This is a difficult one, but I would hope that somewhere in your plan for that particular workweek you had put aside some time for such a contingency as this. It may mean that you can’t go to the gym until later that evening, or you have to postpone some less urgent work for the next day. But in the great scheme of things you still have the same amount of time in your day, you are juggling around a bit to accommodate a client or other such work project.

We can all blame lack of time, not enough hours in the day, and we can work more hours, but then we find we are doing even more work and needing even more hours in the day! Maybe it’s about control, being unable to control time?

Another great quote which offers great food for thought:

“Time is free, but it's priceless. You can't own it, but you can use it. You can't keep it, but you can spend it. Once you've lost it you can never get it back.”

Time is precious. It is a gift—why not look at time as our friend, not blame it for going fast or going slow, but work with it as a partner and we might even feel less stressed. We all have the same amount of time in our days, it’s what we do with that time that counts.

Linda Ockwell-Jenner is the Social Sweetheart. She is President of Motivational Steps and Co-Founder of the Small Business Community Network (SBCN) based in Waterloo Region. Find out more about Linda at www.motivationalsteps.com and www.sbcncanada.org