Especially for SME’s – 44: Time – Proactive and reactive.

15 June 2022

SME 1: We should call our production planning guy and tell him all these points in scheduling: Then he won’t get calls that are really shouts from the customer: The higher the decibel of the shouts the higher the priority that customer gets!

SME 3: Is there any other practical things we can do to manage this ever fleeting resource namely time: we cannot control this fleeting speed and we many times don’t even bother about its fleeting, because it is fleeting so slyly and silently we don’t even realize it.

Mr. Lowe: I follow a particular tactic to this very real problem you are highlighting: I have developed a habit of looking into my watch every 10 mins. and ask the question to myself: Have I used the last 10 minutes fruitfully vis-à-vis my roles? If the answer is yes, I give another 10 minutes to it else I wind up whatever I am doing.

SME 2: That is a very useful thing to manage time.

SME 3: I have observed one thing: When we do a specific thing after applying our mind and answering the question is the timing correct, it has far more effect than if we do it without considering timing.

And I have observed that this Govt. in India is very clever in timing a decision and starting an action than any previous Govt.

Mr. Lowe: That is why Pak. is now breathing hard now and all along we have been breathing hard. Same thing with the opposition parties today. We call it being proactive rather than being reactive. This is very important aspect of effective time management.

SME 3: I fell a loss of liberty and freedom when I am forced to do jobs I don’t like. I feel I have become a slave to circumstances. What can we do about this?

Mr. Lowe: In life, official or personal, we have to do certain things i.e., spend time on activities that we have to do, based on our roles with a view to give unconditional + to the Super systems that we are serving via that role. If we do not spend time on these activities, we will be perceived, and rightly so, as being irresponsible and undependable. On the other hand we cannot be spending time only on such activities since we may feel that we have become slaves to circumstances and we hate that. The sense of liberty and freedom we enjoy comes from activities, official or personal, that we love to do. If we cannot decide how to spend our time and spending time only on activities forced upon us, we cannot be happy. So we have to spend time on activities that we love to do as well. That is finding a role that we love to have- if not role at least tasks in a process- rather than a role that we have to do. We have to be comfortable with doing both these opposite roles.

The best way to do this, I have found, is to finish the activities that we have to do first and fast. Once these activities are completed, we feel so relieved that we enjoy even more the time spent on activities that we love to do. ………………….contd.