I
often heard many learned people and academicians talking about how to manage time so that you get your work done on time. Manage your time so that you can
be successful. Manage your time so that you don’t stress out yourself. Manage
your time so that you will pass your exam.
But
is it true that we can manage our time? How do we manage our time? Myself
being a teacher, I told my students to manage their time until recently I
realized I made a mistake.
I personally think it is impossible to manage
a time.
Management
essentially means organizing any kinds of stuff in a way we want it to happen.
It shows that we have good control over something if we can manage it
effectively. But can we control TIME?
Time
is not physical stuff. We cannot play with time as we do with the dough. We can
knead the dough in any shape we desire but we can’t with time. Leave aside
playing with time for a day, we can’t even do it with a minute. One must get
clear that time is just a concept. And it is impossible to manage an abstract
concept.
Time
is the same for all, be it king or peasant, rich or poor, black or white, male or
female, theist or atheist, Buddhism or Non-Buddhism. It is the only entity
besides death, which equals every being in the universe. Everyone has 24 hours
in a day, not a second more or a second less. Then how is it that some people
seem to get things done on time and some never do in whatever way they managed
their time? The fact is simple. People are trying out their best to manage time
and not themselves. Few successful people might have managed themselves with
intention or they got there with luck. But all the people who manage themselves
will succeed for sure.
Managing
yourself means planning how to use yourself. If an individual makes an effort
to utilize themselves fully in whatever endeavor, time will get automatically
managed in a way they want it to happen. Many a time, many people schedule
their time but they fail to work out their plan, so managing time fails
terribly.
But
if we work out our plan, time will not betray. So, we don’t have to manage your
time. Remember time is just a concept.
If
we keep on managing our time, PROCRASTINATION is a guaranteed by-product because
we can always reschedule our time and re-manage it. But if we manage our work,
we don’t need to re-manage it as it would have been done anyway.
We
can manage time only if we can procrastinate it but we simply can’t. What we
procrastinate is not the time, it is our plan or our work or our action. Hence,
there is no point in managing time if we can’t manage ourselves.
This
is purely my understanding of ‘Time Management’. Regardless of how others
perceive it, for me, I manage myself and my time gets automated to me. It is far
easier to manage myself than managing my time.
Dechen
Wangchuk
