"The “Course Topics” series from Manage Train Learn and Slide Topics is a collection of over 4000 slides that will help you master a wide range of management and personal development skills. The 202 PowerPoints in this series offer you a complete and in-depth study of each topic. This presentation is on "The Paradoxes of Time".

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The Paradoxes of Time
Time Management
MTL Course Topics
The Paradoxes of Time
TIME MANAGEMENT

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The Paradoxes of Time
Time Management
MTL Course Topics
The Course Topics series from Manage Train Learn is a large collection of topics that will help you as a learner
to quickly and easily master a range of skills in your everyday working life and life outside work. If you are a
trainer, they are perfect for adding to your classroom courses and online learning plans.
COURSE TOPICS FROM MTL
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The Paradoxes of Time
Time Management
MTL Course Topics
ARE YOU READY?
OK, LET’S START!

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The Paradoxes of Time
Time Management
MTL Course Topics
INTRODUCTION
Good time management means many things. It means
having control over your time instead of letting time control
you. It also means doing the right things as well as the right
things right. It means saving time when we would otherwise
waste it. And it means finding a balance in how we carry out
the tasks in our life. This module introduces you to the
simple but complex nature of time and how and why it is
one of the most important resources to learn how to
manage.

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The Paradoxes of Time
Time Management
MTL Course Topics
THE PARADOXES OF TIME
The study of time management produces many paradoxes.
For example, time is simple and yet complex; easy to grasp
and yet difficult to comprehend.
Consider some of the following paradoxes and definitions of
time:
• time is universal and personal
• time is a resource but like no other
• time is complex yet known to all
• time is money but costs nothing
• time is life: how you spend time is how you spend your
life
• time management is goal management
• time management is task management.
"You will never find time for anything. If you want time you
must make it." (Charles Buxton 1853-1934)

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The Paradoxes of Time
Time Management
MTL Course Topics
TIME IS UNIVERSAL
Time is the one commodity which is common to everyone
on earth. It is the way we record our life on the planet and
our own individual ages, celebrations and histories.
Time comes in three dimensions for everyone: a past that
we can learn from; a present time which is ours to choose
how to use; and a future time in which we place our goals,
our plans, our hopes, our dreams, and our ambitions.
For everyone, whoever they are, time moves at the same
rate. In the average 40-hour working week, we have the
potential to be productive for 240 minutes or 1440 seconds.
In a working year, that gives us a possible workload of:
• 17,600 hours of work a year
• 105,600 minutes of work a year
• 6,336,000 seconds of work a year.

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Time Management
MTL Course Topics
THE INTANGIBLE RESOURCE
The management writer Peter Drucker has described time
as the last great resource left to man. Whereas we know
how to manage the tangible resources of land, buildings,
equipment, materials, money and people, time is still hard
to pin down and manage.
The evidence of mismanaged time is all around us: people
who feel unfulfilled; people who feel stress from excessive
workloads or underloads; and people who complain that
they feel their lives are meaningless and have no direction.
Although it is an intangible resource, time can be managed
in exactly the same way as other resources, by recording
how it is used (eg through the use of time logs); analysing
what happens to it; planning how to use it for our benefit;
organising our lives around it; and taking action to manage it
better.

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Time Management
MTL Course Topics
MANAGING RESOURCES
One of the ways we can define "management", whether in
our personal lives or working lives, is the ability with which
we use the resources we are given. These resources consist
of both tangible and intangible resources.
Tangible resources include:
1. land and buildings
2. machinery and equipment
3. raw materials.
4. Intangible resources include:
5. people
6. information
7. time.
Money is both a tangible and intangible resource and the
basic resource of all the rest.

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Time Management
MTL Course Topics
TIME AS A RESOURCE
Time is similar to other resources because:
• it is available to those who want to manage it
• it can be used and traded (eg buying people's working
time in exchange for money in the form of pay)
• its value can be increased after its use.
Time is unlike other resources because:
• we can't store it or save it up
• we can't manipulate it into something else
• we can't make more of it than we're given.
• In short, we cannot manage time in the sense of
controlling it and exploiting it. Time is simply a record of
how we manage ourselves.
"Until you value yourself, you will not value time. Until you
value your time, you will not do anything with it." (M. Scott
Peck)

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Time Management
MTL Course Topics
THE COMPLEXITIES OF TIME
It is difficult to fully grasp Time as a concept, universal and
familiar though it is. We can see the results of time in our
achievements, our accomplishments and our successes. We
can also see how we waste time in our neglect, our failures
and our missed opportunities. The passing of a day, a
month, a year and a lifetime gives us a way to measure our
use of time. But we cannot see Time itself.
Time is full of paradox:
1. time moves relentlessly at a fixed speed; and yet we feel
it sometimes flies by or drags
2. time is limited, because there is only so much, and yet
limitless because it has no end
3. time defies attempts to be controlled, reversed,
speeded up and yet it can be managed
4. time is familiar to everyone and yet there are few who
would claim to be perfect time managers.

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Time Management
MTL Course Topics
THE VALUE OF TIME
To realise the value of one year, ask a student who has failed
his final exam.
To realise the value of one month, ask a mother who has
given birth to a premature baby.
To realise the value of one week, ask an editor of a weekly
newspaper.
To realise the value of one day, ask a daily wage labourer
who has 10 kids to feed.
To realise the value of one hour, ask the lovers who are
waiting to meet.
To realise the value of one minute, ask a person who has
missed the train, the bus or the plane.
To realise the value of one second, ask a person who has
survived an accident.
To realise the value of one millisecond, ask the person who
has won a silver medal in the Olympics.
Time waits for no one. Treasure every moment you have.
(Ann Landers)

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Time Management
MTL Course Topics
TIME IS MONEY
The old proverb tells us that "time is money" and most of us
accept the saying without question. But what does it really
mean and is it true?
Time does appear to be like money because the passing of
time and how we use it can be either a cost to us or a
benefit. Time allows us to make money or lose it.
We can actually put a cost on time:
• the time it takes us to achieve our goals and rewards
• the time we save by doing things efficiently
• the use we make of saved time to do other things which
make more money or value.
• And yet time is clearly not the same as money, since it is
a free and renewable resource.
"If money is the great divider, time is the great equalizer."

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Time Management
MTL Course Topics
TIME IS LIFE
Time and life go hand in hand. Time is the historical past,
the current present and the way we imagine the future. Our
lives are recorded in our obituaries and on our tombstones
in terms of time.
We understand life and its passing by giving it time: seconds,
minutes, hours, weeks, months, years, periods of life,
lifetimes, generations, centuries, eras and so on.
The way we manage our time is therefore the way we
manage our lives. If we manage what we do well, we can
claim to have spent our lives and our time well; if we
manage what we do badly, we can regret that our lives and
our time have been wasted.
"Happiness may well consist primarily of an attitude
towards time." (Robert Grudin)

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Time Management
MTL Course Topics
LIFETIME ACTIVITIES
Paul Rice of Timesource has calculated the amount of time
an average human being spends on the following activities:
23 years sleeping
19 years working
9 years on Leisure Activities
7 years Traveling
6 years eating
3 years being sick
2 years on Personal Hygiene
1 year on Religious Activities
According to USA Today, we spend the following amounts of
time in work meetings:
8.5 hours for Employees
10.5 hours for Middle Management
12 hours for Top Executives

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Time Management
MTL Course Topics
SPENDING OUR TIME
Most of us spend our lives in four areas: the home, the workplace,
pursuing social activities, and pursuing personal activities. Some of
these areas may overlap; they are each of different size in terms of
hours spent in them and of different importance.
In an average week we might portion up our 104 waking hours as
follows:
• at work, 40 hours
• at home, 30 hours
• pursuing social activities, 20 hours
• pursuing personal activities, 14 hours.
Just as we can measure and record how we spend a week, so we can
also measure how we spend the 24 hours of a day, for example:
• sleep, 8 hours
• work, 8 hours
• personal needs such as eating, 3 hours
• family and leisure time, 2 hours
• routine chores, 2 hours
• free time, 1 hour.

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Time Management
MTL Course Topics
TIME AND GOALS
Time management appeals to many people because it
sounds like the solution to why we fail to achieve the goals
we set ourselves.
"I never seem to accomplish anything these days."
"I only ever get halfway through something when something
else comes along."
"I plan my day in detail and then something unexpected
crops up."
"I seem to have a crisis every 10 minutes."
"I have no time to call my own - everyone else wants me."
"I'm 48. I don't seem to have done anything with my life.“
"I would willingly stand at street corners, hat in hand,
begging passers-by to drop their unused minutes in it."
(Bernard Berenson)

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Time Management
MTL Course Topics
NEVER ENOUGH TIME
In a survey for the Abbey National building society, it was found
that most people feel they never have enough time to do what
they want.
1. An average family spends £5000 a year getting others to do
chores that they don't have time to do themselves.
2. 72% of families buy takeaway meals because, they say, they
don't have time to cook a meal themselves.
3. 66% of people say they don't have time to do DIY,
gardening, and basic housework.
4. About half of those surveyed say they were too busy to
spend quality time with family and friends.
5. 40% said they were too pressured to do any long-term
planning.
6. 30% said they hadn't time to manage their daily finances.
7. 37% said that, in the past year, they had forgotten an
important birthday or anniversary of family, friends, and
colleagues.
In most of these cases, it isn't time that is lacking but
prioritising.

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Time Management
MTL Course Topics
TIME AND TASKS
Time activities are inseparable from tasks activities.
Everything we do takes time. The difference between
managing tasks and not managing them is that, when we
manage tasks,,...
1. we can plan our activities
2. we can put them into the best sequence to achieve our
goals
3. we can decide which tasks to do ourselves and which to
get others to do
4. we can measure them to make them as efficient as
possible.
The difference in managing and not managing tasks is the
difference between the woodcutter who stops to sharpen
his saw and the woodcutter who refuses to stop because he
has so many logs still to cut. He is like the stressed executive
who is too busy to learn about Time management!

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Time Management
MTL Course Topics
SAVE 100 HOURS A WEEK
A recent study from Australia concluded that people who
say they don't have enough time are fooling themselves.
The University of New South Wales and the Australian
National University carried out a study that shows we do far
more with our time than we need to.
Using the benchmark of a working couple without children,
the study found that this family needed only to work 20
hours a week for their needs, but actually worked 79;
needed only to spend 18 hours a week on household tasks
but actually spend 37; and instead of 116 hours on personal
care, including eating and sleeping, actually spent 138 on
such tasks.
If, therefore, the couple were willing to live according to
their actual needs, they would actually save 100 hours a
week.

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Time Management
MTL Course Topics
TIME IS FOREVER, BUT...
Although we measure time as a straight line from as far back
as we can remember, or have learnt about, into a future as
far ahead as we want to project our thoughts, we can only
ever experience time in the present moment of Now.
This is why some eminent thinkers claim that time is really
only an illusion. We can only experience past and future in
our minds. And because of this, it is not actual events in the
past or future that bring us joy or suffering; it is the mind's
interpretation of them.
These same thinkers argue that, if we live fully in the
timeless present moment, we will have seen through the
illusion of time (and by implication, space) and will no
longer need to manage it. We only need to live it.
The ultimate paradox of time is that, although it is forever, it
only truly exists in the timeless now.

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Time Management
MTL Course Topics
THAT’S
IT!
WELL DONE!

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The Paradoxes of Time
Time Management
MTL Course Topics
THANK YOU
This has been a Slide Topic from Manage Train Learn