By Todd Duncan

If you are not maximizing time, you are not being highly productive in your goals pursuit. If you are not highly productive, there is a good chance that the things you are doing might not be producing profit, both personally and professionally. For the last twenty years, I have been researching people and their productivity behaviors and have discovered the following truths:

1. People Spend 75% of their time on things that are urgent and important or urgent and not important. We wrongly believe that, generally speaking, we are doing the best we can. We can all do a better job to lower this percentage.

2. If people are not preventing, they will always be reacting. When things get messed up in our lives, it is usually our own fault. Of course, there are those circumstances over which we have limited control. Some events will happen regardless of planning, but while we may not be able to control all events in life, we can and must control our responses to these events. In most cases, everything that happens to us is fixable.

3. People need to spend 75 percent of their time in those areas that are not urgent but important. Too many of us believe we will never accomplish all that we want to do. This is a myth. To accomplish future goals, we must fi rst be patently clear on what is important to us today.

4. Until people clean up the messes in their lives, productivity will not happen. If we are not preventing, we are reacting. The question we must ask ourselves is, are we in control or are we on autopilot?

5. Most people live lives that are in conflict with their values. We live this way because, not knowing our values, we have no frame of reference on how to use our time. Additionally, most of us do not know how to schedule blocks of time that allow us to get the right things done. The “first things first” mentality is the key to making this work.

6. While we cannot control everything, we can control more things. When we take ownership of our lives, we move beyond mediocrity toward new visions of what is truly possible.

7. People will never be able to manage their time effectively 100 percent of the time; however, we can all do a better job than we are now doing. Most of us do not know how to plan an effective day. If we do not define our day and put demands on it, the day will define us, rule us, and squeeze us into its own mold.

8. The number one way to be better at using our time is to be proactive, to begin the process with the end in mind. We have two choices: control or be controlled. There are no other options. We either control our time, or we do not.

Time Waits For No One

Treasure every moment you have. When you do, you will find not only is time important, but there is a time for all things. Our task is to get rid of the unimportant and schedule the important by using our values as the tools and motivation to make this happen.

The following concept can change your life forever: When you combine “the value of time” with the truth that “there is a time for everything,” you will possess the most powerful, effective, life-changing tool for powerful living.

Determine what is most important to you; then schedule to get it done in a timely manner.

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