Quotes on Time Management

“You need to get into the habit of keeping nothing on your mind. And the way to do that …… is not by managing time, managing information, or managing priorities. After all:

• You don’t manage five minutes and wind up with six;
• You don’t manage information overload – otherwise you’d walk into a library and die, or the first time you connect to the web, or even opened a phone book, you’d blow up;
• You don’t manage priorities, you have them.

Instead, the key to managing all of your “STUFF” IS MANAGING YOUR ACTIONS.

The real issue is how to make appropriate choices about what to do at any point in time. The real issue is how we manage actions.”

“Things rarely get stuck because of lack of time. They get stuck because the doing of them has not been defined.” “Most of the stress people experience comes from inappropriately managed commitments they make or accept.” David Allen

Stephen Covey proposes an interesting way to think of time, in his book: “First Things First”. In this he explains contrasting views of time using the clock and the compass as metaphors.

• “The clock represents our commitments, appointments, schedules, goals and activities – what we do with and how we manage our time. The compass represents our vision, values, principles, mission, conscience, direction – what we feel is important and how we lead our lives.”
• “The struggle comes when we sense a gap between the clock and the compass – when what we do doesn’t contribute to what is most important in our lives.” Stephen Covey

For more on this, see our article: What Is Time Management? Taking A Radical View Of Time. Now here’s the last of this section’s quotes on time management, but not from David Allen or Stephen Covey!

• ”This constant unproductive preoccupation with all the things we have to do is the single largest consumer of time and energy.” Kerry Gleeson

Searching for quotes on time management inevitably leads to the question “Why are we always short of time?” It’s often this question that sends many of us searching in the first place.

• “Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its shortness.” Jean de La Bruysre.
• “Why do people complain that there’s no time to get their work done? Because there is more work to do than the work they think they have to do.” David Allen
• “It is not that we are short of time….It is the way that we treat time, even the way that we think about it. A time revolution..is the fastest way to make a giant leap in both happiness and effectiveness.” Richard Koch

And what is the time revolution?

• “There is no shortage of time. In fact, we are positively awash with it. We only make good use of 20 per cent of our time…. The 80/20 principle says that if we doubled our time on the top 20% of activities, we could work a two-day week and achieve 60 per cent more than now.” “It is not shortage of time that should worry us, but the tendency for the majority of time to be spent in low-quality ways.” Richard Koch
• “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” Douglas Adams
• “There’s never enough time to do something right first time, but there is always enough time to go back and do it again.” Anon

• “In truth, people can generally make time for what they choose to do; it is not really the time but the will that is lacking.” Sir John Lubbock
• “Time you enjoyed wasting is not wasted time.” T. S. Elliot
• “There is one thing we can do, and the happiest people are those who can do it to the limit of their ability. We can be completely present. We can be all here. We can … give all our attention to the opportunity before us.” Mark Van Doren
• “The art of resting the mind and the power of dismissing from it all care and worry is probably one of the secrets of our great men. Captain J.A. Hatfield.

Although the next extract may not technically belong on a page of quotes on time management, it does address the question of how we might spend our time. Quite powerfully, we might add.

“This is the true joy in life….being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one…being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy…I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die. For the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is not a brief candle to me. It’s a sort of splendid torch which I’ve got to hold up for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.” George Bernard Shaw

So, how do you spend your time? To simply quote the phrase “today well lived” wouldn’t do justice to a refreshing view of time management. “Salutation to the Dawn” contains some thought provoking words:

Look to this day!
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course
Lie all the verities and realities of your existence:
The bliss of growth
The glory of action
The splendour of beauty,
For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow is only a vision,
But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day!
Such is the salutation of the dawn.
(Indian dramatist, Kalidasa)