by Chaz Philips

Created on: October 24, 2009

A Few Words About Delegation and "Time Management"

Time Management? Get over it. However, if you want an increase in disposable free time to enjoy more of life, read this article. Trying to manage time in a hectic world is a topic that is just about as beaten up, abused and useless as my father's old suitcase. Just as managing your checkbook wisely will not give you more money, managing your time wisely will not give you more time. Besides, managing time takes time, when what is needed is to have less to do each day. Want more time? Do less. After some practice at doing this, your productivity will also increase due to less unnecessary work, creating even more free time. This is not incidental; in fact, it is required for you to achieve what you want: more free time. This end goal was eloquently stated by William of Occam (1300-1350), "It is vain to do with more what can be done with less."

When most people try to "manage their time wisely," they try to organize and plan how to cram more minutiae into a finite span. Organizing your Blackberry contacts, setting up multiple email folders so each of the many time wasting messages that pass through your "in" box each day have a special place to call home, and pairing down your thimble collection to make dusting easier are all examples of this. This is not the goal at all. The goal is more free time, less work, and less "busy-ness."

Albert Einstein once wrote "Any man who reads too much and uses his brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking." That being said, and in the interest of time, reading this article and doing you own introspection will be all that is required of you. Take the ideas contained, try them out and see what works. That will be the right method for you. Here are some ideas for consideration. There are two ways to do less: eliminate tasks and delegate tasks. Elimination is the first place to start. Those around you do not appreciate being delegated useless tasks.

Elimination: "Love of bustle is not industry"-Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Roman philosopher (4 BC - 65AD).

First, when deciding what time-consumers to eliminate, consider the "80-20 Rule." Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) was a controversial economist who inspired a "law" of income distribution that now bears his name, Pareto's Law, more frequently called "The 80-20 Rule." It simply states that 80 percent of your outputs come from 20 percents of your inputs. The list of applications for this is infinitely long. Here are some small examples:

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