Success Through Time Management!

Success through Time Management is the Progressive Realization of Worthwhile, 
Predetermined Personal Goals. Now, what do all these fancy words mean? Well, 
let's look at them individually:


Progressive...means ongoing and something you work at on a regular schedule
Realization....something that comes to be...accomplishment
Worthwhile..has a meaningful benefit..something you feel good about
Predetermined...goal set in advance of doing it
Personal... means it is yours and only yours..you own it
Goals....a task you need to accomplish set in writing with actions and due dates


It is true that who we are today is a culmination of our past behavior and we behave 
the way we have been programmed. The top 3% of individuals in our country today are 
wealthy people. The next 10% are pretty well off and have an average net worth of over 
$200,000. Now, the next 60% are the ones who pay most of the taxes, have a little equity in their home which is generally offset by Visa and Mastercard and usually have a net worth of $0. There are 230 million people in this category. The remaining 27% need some form of help to get by. The difference between the average of the first two groups is 50 times and from the top of the first group to the bottom of the second is 2000 times!


Now, this is not just a financial abormality. How many of you belong to some type of
organization? Church is probably a great example. If you took the top 13% out of that 
group of people what would you likely have left? Probably not much, right? These 13% are the Leaders; the people who get things accomplished that the others look up to! What sets the 3% apart from the 10%? Many say that they inherited it...but the statistics say otherwise. Only 9% of people have wills! They all have great Time Management skills and get more done is less time than the others. How do they do that? Read on...


These numbers have not changed in 75 years. Through all the wars, Presidents,
 Republican, Democrat, Race or Religion it makes no difference. Economists tell us that if you re-distributed all the money in our country and gave everyone an equal share, in 7 years it would be back in the same 3-10-60-27 distribution but not necessarily in the same hands...amazing isn't it?


How can we change who we are and get ourselves in the top 13%? We must change 
our behavior and that is done through Goal Setting and a process called Spaced 
Repetition. Spaced Repetition is how we learned to do the things we do today...also 
called Conditioning.  We have both positive and negative conditioning. Do you 
remember these?


Children should be seen and not ______
Don't bite off more than you can ______
Don't go where you're not ______
Never talk to a ______
Never take candy from a ______
Mom said be sure you have on clean underwear because______
How many of you thought "Be Careful" was part of going out the door?


Why do we remember these things so well? When you hear something only one time 
you will remember less than 3% after one week ... and the Pastors blame themselves 
when they ask you about last weeks Sermon! The reason the examples are so vivid is 
because we heard them over and over again with space in between ... 
spaced repetition. When Lou Holtz coached Notre Dame he kept telling his players 
how well they were doing...every day...day after day...over and over again. Pretty soon that's all they remembered was how good they were and guess what happened? 
You got it!


Well, if you want to change your current results you must change Your Attitude which 
drives Your Behavior. The way to do this is through Goal Setting and Spaced Repetition. Professor George Odiom of the University of Michigan once said:"That which does not change remains the same" (very profound statement!) but he also said: "That which remains the same becomes obsolete" Let's not go there. Let us do the things we talked about today and get ourselves in the top 13% of all people in our country.


Good Time Management mandates the use of Goal Setting and we will explore the 
elements to  Time Management Goals in future posts to this Blog. We'll take a look 
at Effective Use of Time, Detractors to Time, Top Payoff Activities, Master List of 
Time Managment Goals, Identifying Time Problems, and the Effective use of Delegation.