It Is Not Counting The Hours That Counts, But Making The Hours Count
Some people think that being busy is what truly matters, but this is not always the truth. What matters is being productive and adding value, not just about being busy. Time is a very precious and valuable asset, which is distributed to everyone in an equal proportion irrespective of who they are. But the difference in someone who succeeds from someone who does not, and someone who lives a fulfilled life from others, is how the hours in a day are spent. It is not how long you have that counts, but how you have translation them into value. This is why, it is not about counting the hours, rather it is about making the hours count.
A lot of people take pride in being busy - they talk about the activities they fill their day with, the back-to-back tasks they have, their schedules, meetings, etc. But what they fail to understand is that busyness does not correlate to progress nor productivity. Do you know that someone can be making motion in a roundabout for hours, yet they are not making progress? It is true that they are busy and expending a lot of energy and of course, work is being done, but at the end, no reasonable progress will be made. Similarly, in other aspects of life, it is not just about being busy, but doing something worthwhile. This is why; what you are doing is important, but much more important is how you are doing it.
In the world we live in, what people are interested to see is not how hard or tedious the task you are doing is, but the result you have. If you spend 3 days on a task that takes someone else 30mins to complete, you are not better than them. Time is too precious to be wasted on things that do not add value. If there is an easier and better way to get a task done, then there is nothing stopping you from using the method and saving time. Trust me, time wasted is gone, because time will not pause and wait for you. You have to be mindful of how you do things, not only what you want to do. Doing the right thing is good definitely, but you also need to ensure that you do it rightly.
In the neighbourhood where I stayed briefly sometimes ago, I experienced something. It was an estate which also shared a fence with another estate. There was a woman who sold drinks inside the other estate. Each time I wanted to buy drink, I would leave the estate gate completely, then take a long walk to turn and then enter the other estate. Cumulatively, this would be about 40mins walk. Then what I did was to collect the number of the woman selling the drinks. Since the house was close to the fense of the estate, and her own place was also close to the fense of their own estate. So if I called her, she would just pass the drink from the fense to me and I will pay her. What would have been done in 40mins with so much stress and efforts was done in less than 2mins. This goes to prove that it is not the intensity of the labour you have put in, nor the duration of the efforts that count, but the productivity, result obtained, and value added.
Someone can be busy all day and achieve very little or even nothing significant. While someone can work for just few hours and achieve significant results. This is why you have to be very intentional in the way you spend your time. In order to achieve this, you have to prioritise your activities and your tasks. You do not have to try to get everything done at once because it may make you not to even get anyone completed. Just focus on one and then do it in the most effective and efficient way you can. When that one is done, then you can take up another task. In that way, you will maximise time effectively. You need to be focused, intentional, and purpose-driven for you to maximise time effectively well.
You may have a couple of things to get done, but you have to ask yourself what matters most. That is; what your goals are, what the plans are, what values they will bring, what importance they are of. All these will help you to know which task to focus on first and prioritise them well. Time, just like every other valuable asset, has to be invested well and used properly if it must bring the required profit. Do not allow valuable time to pass you by without utilising it to achieve something worthwhile. Remember that you are absolutely responsible for making your time count.
Thanks for reading
