I wrote earlier about punctuality, but there is a broader theme to be addressed: time management. Many people I meet are complaining about lack of time to do many things in their life, and forever scrambling from one activity to another. So, what are my views on time management?
At any point, it is important to know what one’s top three priorities are. These are the important themes – and not just the most immediate to-dos. These priorities move us forward in the direction which we want to do. For me, my top three priorities (and these have generally remained unchanged for the past few years are): making Netcore into an enduring, great company, putting India on an irreversible path to freedom and prosperity, and creating institutions for generations to come as part of philanthropy. These are my BHAGs (big, hairy, audacious goals). They anchor my life. I know I cannot work on all of them – the immediate focus is Netcore. But these are three things that I think about and want to accomplish in life – have some successes in all three areas in my obituary.
The key to time management is controlling who can take away your time. I do not have an assistant to allocate my time; I do it myself. I make the decision of who needs to be given time. I maintain a Word doc as my Calendar. It makes me do annotations, move things around easily, keep a running list of future meetings I need to schedule – all in an easy low-tech way. I do not rely on Google Calendar or any other calendaring system. This has worked well. In the past two-and-a-half years, I have missed one meeting and been late for another meeting. That is 2 out of probably 2,000 engagements. The past two years were easier because most of these meetings happened on Zoom; with the world having opened, more in-person meetings happen now, and thus travel times will reduce efficiency of time even as the in-person meetings will improve the quality of outcomes.
It is important to decide whom to meet and whom to avoid. One cannot say Yes to every meeting request. I like to keep some free time daily so I can read and think. Like, the other day, I kept a few hours of contiguous time so I could dig deep into the world of Web3 and think how it can be applied to solving problems in adtech and martech. While conversations with others are important, some contiguous time to reflect on the inputs and connect the dots is important – this cannot be delegated.
One has about 10-12 hours a day. It is very difficult to maintain 100% performance throughout the day. One has to decide which are the times one can be most productive and block off that time. For me, the early mornings are the “me-time”. Do not let any person, message, device or app intrude into that.
To summarise: time management is thus another word for prioritisation. Know the tasks and the people that are important to you. Build your life around them. The rest are like interrupts which will come and have to be handled. Don’t let them define the day. Controlling how and to whom you allocate your time is critical. Ensuring plenty of white spaces in the calendar for the writing, daydreaming and mindwandering is essential.
