Time Management Ninja. Craig Jarrow

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      The “I don’t have enough time!” statement is an excuse for not taking charge of your day. It’s a cheap line for not living a purposeful life. When you practice proper productivity habits, you aren’t expending more precious minutes and hours—you are seizing them back.

      Get More Time for Your Life

      You have the same amount of time every day. In fact, we all do.

      24 hours. 1,440 minutes. 86,400 seconds.

      Wouldn’t it be great if you had an extra hour in your day? How about two? Or even three? Suddenly, the world opens up. It’s kind of like fantasizing about winning the lottery.

      Except…managing your time properly is far more likely to happen. You can win the time lottery! You can get precious moments back. The time you are losing each day. Time that you are wasting on procrastination or, frankly, unnecessary activities.

      Now here’s the first lottery number. The first ninja move, my grasshopper. Any attempt to manage your time must give you back more time than it takes.

      Yes, you must invest time in planning your activities, but the return that investment brings should be more than it requires upfront.

      This means your system needs to be simple.

      Make it Easy and Breezy

      In addition to the “not enough time” excuse, the runner-up is “effective planning is too difficult.”

      Okay, so maybe some of you believe this whole time-saving thing is just too hard. Well, it doesn’t help when those who do try to manage their time are left at the “try” phase. They give up because their systems are just too complicated. Those systems are the ones that scare potential time-savers away. How could you realistically be expected to micro-manage your day to the second? Or worse, be expected to plan every detail of the next five years? Ahhh!

      Time management shouldn’t require a flowchart. It doesn’t need Zen philosophies. Or memorizing matrices of next actions (whatever that means).

      Instead, effective planning should be simple. Only that way can it fit into your lifestyle and daily activities seamlessly. When done correctly, it becomes a sleek ninja routine that you can keep up effortlessly.

      Always Be Time-Mindful

      Another misconception about time management is that it is something you only “turn on” when you need it. Preferably, it is a set of habits that are part of your daily activities. You head out to jog, apply time management. You sneak a nap in, apply time management. Time management for you, and you, and you.

      The truth is, you won’t need to “turn it on” because soon you will learn how to always live a life that incorporates the most effective productivity principles. This knowledge and its application will allow you to manage your life more easily.

      When you incorporate effective planning into your daily lifestyle, others will look to you as the model of how things should get done. And they will be in awe of how easily you seem to stay on top of your workload. How does that sound?

      Simplicity Is Best

      When approaching time management for the first time, many beginners are overwhelmed. I don’t blame them. Google “time management apps” and you’ll generate 1.86 billion results.

      Another great irony—some of the most popular methodologies for a productive life are also the most cumbersome and complicated.

      Your life already has too much going on, why would you want to add more difficulty?

      As mentioned before, a good rule of thumb is, “If your time management requires a flow chart, it is too complicated.” Are you really going to refer to a chart every time you are trying to get organized? It definitely shouldn’t take you thirty minutes to prioritize and sort your to-do list into a matrix either.

      A good set of necessary weapons, used with discipline, will beat a complicated system any day of the week.

      When it comes to time management, the simplest solution is the best.

      Common sense and practical tools (the best weapons for the war against wasted time) will make you more successful than a system that takes weeks to learn and years to implement. Managing your time should be quick, effortless, and efficient.

      So, as you start to create an effective plan for controlling your time, keep Tip 1 in mind. Keep. Things. Simple.

      In the next chapter, we will examine the time management weapons that you will need to be as productive as possible. With the right training and mindset, you will become a stealthy time management ninja in no time.

      Ninja Wisdom

      5Time management should give back more time than it takes.

      5Using time effectively should be an easy habit that is part of your daily routine.

      5The simplest productivity solutions are the most effective.

      Ninja Training

      If you are telling yourself that you don’t have time for time management, ask yourself the following questions:

      5Are you genuinely practicing time management each and every day or are you only giving it lip service?

      5When and where do you do your planning and preparation? (We will delve into these topics in future chapters.) Do you think your current planning routine is helping you? In what ways?

      5Where and on what do you waste time each day?

      5Where do you see opportunities to reclaim time in your day?

      5What would you do with an extra two hours in your day? Be specific. Make a list of the activities, projects, or goals that you would spend this time on.

      Time Management Isn’t a Light Switch

      Do you turn on your time management when you are in a jam? Only to turn it back off once it is the weekend or when you are past the obstacle?

      That method works just as well as cramming for a test. Sure, it might work in the short-term. But suddenly it’s a few days after you data-dumped all of your last-minute knowledge on the test, and you’re totally ignorant on the subject again. It’s not sustainable. Not very useful if you want to consistently save more time.

      Put quite simply, time management is not a quick one-time fix.

      Far too many people try to use it that way. They think, “I’ll save more time when I need to and then slack off later. I deserve it!” Then you wonder why you still feel totally unproductive.

      Clearly, this technique does not work very well. Yet, in desperate attempts to get their lives back in order, people find themselves continually climbing back on the time management bandwagon.

      In order to organize your time effectively, you need to make the active, daily effort to consistently use your time productively. In short, time management needs to be a habit.

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