I wrote this report last year when I was formulating a Time Management program for a corporate. I am sure this report is going to help people who are struggling with managing their time or want to manage time effectively.

So, let’s get started!!!

What are we really trying to achieve by becoming productive and managing time?

We should ask this question to ourselves and get the bigger picture that what are we trying to achieve and accomplish and what do we really want.

I think all of us are looking for success in life; success is happiness, fulfillment, feeling good all the time, and feeling of enjoyment, contentment.

So, let’s find out what does success really means? It can be broken down into 2 categories: Inner success and Outer success.

Inner success: Feeling of joy, happiness, contentment, fulfillment and the feeling that everything is going to be ok and that everything in the future is going to be great.

Outer success: Feeling of achievement, productivity and of making things happen.

If we only have one of them we don’t feel successful, if we are happy from inside but are not productive or if we have achieved things in life but are not very happy or content about it. So, we want to marry both these like the inner game with the outer game.

The biggest roadblock to internal success is this feeling of not being in control or being controlled and it’s the core issue of not feeling successful from inside. Being able to get things done, make things happen makes you feel that you are in control, so more  we feel good and in control, we produce more results.

So, aim of this program is to make you feel good, feel optimistic from inside and be productive, more result oriented from outside.

In this training you are going to be zooming out, see your situation from outside, get some altitude and then zoom in and work inside it and then zoom out again to see how it has helped you achieve results.

We must understand that productivity is a huge leverage. Most typical time management programs don’t work for everyone because all of us are different personality types and what they teach you in those seminars is not meant for half the people in those trainings. They have got the planners, the step-by-step methods, making lists. Most people won’t use that because they are not used to work like that, they are different personality types. So, there should be a system, which is universal and is for everyone.

Some people equate success with not doing anything however as it turns out it’s not true.

When people retire and do nothing and they tend to become boring and get bored and I even heard of a study that when people retire and do nothing tend to die early.

However, the people who are the most happy or most successful are the most productive people.

This program is broken into several sessions. In every session you are going to do some exercises and create new routines

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So, now let’s talk about a few things, which are stopping us from being productive or being successful.

1. We now live in a world where we are overwhelmed by choice. In the past where there weren’t many options if you wanted to buy a car there weren’t many options of car and not many people could afford it, it was a dream for them. Now if you want to buy a computer there are so many options that we get confused about what to choose. It’s so much confusing that we have so many choices and internally we feel that we don’t have much personal choice. We have this weird dichotomy where we have this conflict. Two of the most important skills that we are going to learn is narrowing options when there are too many and generating options when there are few. We Blur out and get confused when we have too many options and feel trapped when we don’t have any options……..

2. We live in a culture of distractions and interruptions, everyone expects everyone to be available all the time. We distract people anytime and get distracted by people like we pick up the phone and call anyone or keep checking our emails all the time. Distractions and interruptions rob us of maximum energy, so we need to minimize distractions and interruptions………..

3. We live in a culture of obsessive snacking, we don’t eat entire full meal at a time and snack all the unhealthy things all the time. In fact we are snacking on other things as well, we don’t listen to the entire songs any more, we don’t watch one channel at a time. We start doing too many things at a time that our focus is getting fragmented. ……..

4. We have to minimize multitasking and focus on one thing at a time. When you are at work you think about sleep and when you are about to sleep you think about work. This happens because we are not focused…………

5. Our culture is now becoming more interested in getting entertained rather than getting results. When we watch a movie concerned with entertain than with personal development, when we watch news concerned with shock factor rather than actual news, when we eat a meal we are more interested in our senses entertained than in the nutrition factor. So, the culture of entertainment is stripping all the nutrition that lies beneath all these things. We need not to distract ourselves with entertaining our senses and need to discipline ourselves otherwise we will loose the ability to be able to focus and not get results that we want. It’s important to feel good from inside and feel productive all the time rather than having some fun or entertainment. So, beware of culture of entertainment and try to avoid it as much as possible………….

6. Another important realization that I had is that we are becoming a culture of magic pills and instant results. Idea that there is a quick fix, instant results, magic pill for important things in life actually harms you and is counter productive. If you have some pain you go to the doctor and doctor gives you a pill, pain goes away. What if you had some disease, you only suppressed the symptoms. So, the idea of magic pills is immaturity speaking, so work on the system rather than the symptoms………….

Short term results of an action and long term results of an action are typically different and often opposite. For example you like eating cheesy corn chips, what are the short term results, you like the taste the saltiness in it, what are the long term results, after sometime you start feeling bad your energy starts dropping and what are the long term results of eating the chips you gain weight, you mess your system up. Take example of eating raw broccoli, you might not like the taste however long term results are that it has a lot of nutrients in it and feel good from inside and become healthier in the long run. So, life is hard if you live it the easy way and easy if you live it the hard way…………….

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