My Article on Time Management in "The Hindu"

Dear all,

I am pleased to inform that on 07 May 2008, my article on Time Management was published in "The Hindu". It was published page 5 of "Opportunities" supplement.

I was waiting for the newspaper to upload the article on their website. Even after a week since my article was published, they are yet to do so.

When the article was published, I found that about 1/3 of the text was deleted. This deletion of text has made the article less descriptive. Notwithstanding this deletion, the central message of the article remained same. Secondly, the title of my article was also changed. Anyway decision of the editorial board is final.

I would have liked to send the link to all of you however, since article is yet to be uploaded, I am repeating the article below. May I request members of this group to give me constructive feedback?

Warm regards,

Dinesh V Divekar
Freelance Soft Skill & Behavioural Trainer
Bangalore - 560 094
+ 91 9900155394



To save time, invest in your future time now



By Dinesh V Divekar



Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) was an Italian economist who in 1906, observed that 20% of the people in Italy owned 80% of the country's wealth. Over a period of time this observation became known as the Pareto Principle or the 80/20 Rule. It is never exactly 80/20, of course. Sometimes it is 79/21 or 82/18 but the underlying principle is always true. This theory is applied all over the world by multi-national companies as well as much smaller firms. Broadly speaking 80% of all results come from 20% of all efforts. So if you identify which 20% is the most important, complete those and you can't help but be more effective and successful.



The above principle was equally applied to Time Management also where 80% of the results come from 20% of our time spent and 20% results come from 80% of our time spent. But there lies the catch – how to identify these 80% or 20%? For that effective 20%, those not so effective 80% are necessary.



Shailesh is a General Manager. He says he works for 10-12 hours a day. He conducts meetings with his managers, meets vendors, attends customer complaints which are severe in nature, takes decisions related to budgeting and finance, generates market intelligence and so on. He says it is very difficult to demarcate 80% or 20%. His ultimate performance is to improve business. But for this, he says, these mundane activities are necessary for his future decision making ability.



Kusum, Sales Manager of prominent insurance company attended training programme on Time Management. But she says that she disagrees with this principle. She says she has her own theory where 80% of her time is spent in sowing seeds and 20% time is spent in reaping actual benefits. But then how can you reap unless you sow anything?



These are the times wherein “working long hours” is a rule than exception In job advertisements description statements like we are looking for a candidate who is able to work under pressure and stretch for long working hours is not an aberration. In spite of working long and that too under pressure Managers continue to complain of time shortage. The phenomenon is across the spectrum of industries. Then where does the fault lies – with 80% or 20%?



It’s time for us to take a second look at Pareto Principle. What we should be doing is to allocate 80% of our time in routine activities and rest 20% in something for our future activities. Future activity may be of tomorrow, next week, next month or for even next year.



Mahesh works in a public limited company. In his company he has to compile quarterly activity balance sheet. Every quarter ending was a harrowing experience for him. Sometimes he had to work till 2:00 am also. But then he revised the whole work process. Instead handling burden for the whole quarter, he started working month-wise. At the end of the quarter, all that he had to do was compile report for the preceding month and consolidate all the three. Though even now every quarter ending, he still works late, but now it is on a reduced scale. What Mahesh did at the end of the every month was to invest his time in future activities which was the 20% of time.



Not necessarily everyone is as lucky as Mahesh as most of the managers are caught in the web of chores of grind. Over a period of time the web becomes so strong that they hardly get time to simplify their work for the future. Today’s future activity is tomorrow’s routine activity. Finally how managers pass their time today more or less they pass their time in later times also. The cycle repeats day in and day out. Neither can it be blamed on lack of awareness. Many managers are aware that they should spend some of their time in reflective or prospective thinking but unable to do, many of them end up in a fire fighting mission.



Once this allocation of 80% of time for routine activities and rest for future activities is decided, what we need to do is to take review of our daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly activities and wherever possible, we need to improvise our routine activity.



Time is never short or in excess but your success depends on the activities in which you spend your time in. Its time for us to properly divide some of our time for immediate tasks at hand and some of our time for the future.

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