“They only manufacture watches. Wish they could manufactured time”
Circa 2010, the wise man rephrased his earlier statement:
“They still cannot manufacture time, but each individual can”
And here is how the wise man realised how one can manufacture the 25th hour.
Just do one thing – Do the Important Things.
A time-tested tactic if used well would get you that extra hour or may be a couple of hours every day. Slot every activity you do into one of the four quadrants in the picture. Do Quadrant 1, 2, 3, 4 activities in the same priority order. In fact avoid 3 and 4 if you can. Quadrant 2
1. Urgent and Important: E.g. Deadlines. Your Boss needs it NOW, to make a presentation to his boss in 2 hours. Unfortunate to be in this state but some has to live with it.
2. Not Urgent and Important: E.g. spending time with family, Business Planning, Strategising to pre-empt competitors launch plan 6 months down the line. Do this and this by far is the biggest time saver as you would realise. You may just ignore 3 and 4 and nothing will happen to your life.
3. Urgent and Not Important: E.g. Interruptions and phone calls. They need to be attended to but the reason for interruption may not be all that important. In fact it might be an absolute time waster. Avoid if you can.
4. Not Urgent and Not Important: E.g. mindless switching of channels. Sleeping more than 8 hours a day. The zillion timewasters that if you reflect on, you will know.
Now go ahead and listen to the Wise Man’s trick – do the important stuff first.
PS: The wise man is none other than the author.