Realizing Your Dreams Through Setting Goals
Part V: Managing Your Time

In just two days, tomorrow will be yesterday. (Bumper Sticker)

Purpose: By the end of this session, I want my students to know several techniques for making the most of their time. 

Other Resources: See Student Handout and Overhead Sheet

Introduction

It’s one thing to set bold, audacious, hairy goals; quite another to wake up each morning motivated to attack those goals. Just think of your last New Year’s Resolutions. How long did they last?

Successful people have faced many of the same distractions that derail us. Yet, they find ways to keep motivated and to overcome distractions. In this lesson we'll learn some of their tricks.

Discussion: Write down one goal from our last session that you’d especially like to pursue. Now, let’s get some ideas from the class on how we can successfully pursue those goals.

• What are some goals you’ve made progress on in the past? (Let them share.) You're learning to play an instrument, playing a sport, taking Karate, lifting weights, holding down a job, passing a difficult class, etc.)
• What were some difficulties you faced in pursuing that goal? (Write them on the board.)
• What kept you from taking the easy route, ditching the goal and vegging out in front of the tube instead? (Write down on the board the ideas students share. You may want to amplify on some of their ideas from your own experience. Below are some ideas you might add to theirs.)

1 - Take the First Step

No matter how many times you’ve failed in the past, don’t be afraid to take on new challenges. As Confucius once said,

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

Many fail because they never started.  

2 - Don’t Go It Alone

Emerson wrote:

“Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.”  (The Conduct of Life, 1860)

Discussion: What do you think Emerson meant by that statement? How many of you have found that involving others with your goals keeps you motivated? Can you tell us about it?

A high school student said,

The best thing that helps me achieve a goal is to have someone keep me accountable.

Activity: Linking Arms; Standing Together

Ask students to sit down on the floor with their knees bent front of them, feet flat on the floor and knees pointing toward the ceiling. Hands can't touch the ground. Now ask each student to try to stand up from that position (not moving feet or touching the floor with your hands). (Neither tell them to do it alone nor to do it with others. Some will probably try to cheat by putting their hands on the floor or moving their feet, so keep an eye out!)

After they try it for a moment by themselves and realize the difficulty, tell them there is a way that most of them can do it. Let them think and try some more. (If someone thinks of sitting down back to back with someone else, let them do it. If not, instruct them next in how to do it. Either way, the point is made.)

Tell them how it's done. Ask each student to find a partner. Put their legs in the same position as before , sit back to back with the partner and link arms at their elbows. Try to stand up by pushing against each other. If successful, join another successful group so that you try it as a group of four. If the four are successful, try it with eight. See which group wins. 

Debriefing: Some of us aren't as good at physical things as others, but what can this game tell us about success in life? (It's often easier to do things together than separately.) While someone may complain that I didn't say anything at first about that we could work together, neither did I say you had to do it individually. Why do you think most of us think in terms of doing tasks ourselves rather than including others? What are some goals that you can pursue with others? How does working with others help you?

3 - Do first things first.

I heard of the president of a company who needed help managing his time. A consultant gave him a simple suggestion:

“Make a list each morning of all the things you need to accomplish, in order of importance. Do the most important things first.”

When asked what he charged for this advice, the consultant said, “Nothing, for now. Just see what a difference this makes and pay me what you think it’s worth.” Months later, he received a check for thousands of dollars.

Charles Schwab was the successful president of Bethlehem Steel Company. This was the practice that he considered the most important that he ever learned. He’d take five minutes to think through the tasks he should tackle the next day, then list them in order of priority. The next day, he would take on each task in the order he had set.

Discussion: What happens if we don’t start a day with a plan? Do any of you write lists each day? How does it help? Do you try to do them in order of priority?

4 - Use Your Time Wisely

Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. (Will Rogers )

Theodore Roosevelt, 26^th president of the United States , was arguably one of the greatest leaders America has produced.  When he speaks on leadership, I listen. He once said,

Leaders are those who make the most of every moment, of every opportunity, and of every available resource.

It seems that for great leaders, every second has a period after it. They can’t stand to waste time.  

Illustration: Bill Gates, Microsoft’s super-successful leader, knew that he couldn't keep ahead of the computer industry while spending the time that most spend following the popular sitcoms and typical entertainment. To make sure he didn't get sucked into it, he didn't even own a TV until he was 29. Even then, it was just a monitor and a VCR given to him by a long-distance girlfriend so that they could watch the same movies and talk about them by phone afterwards. He made sure that he didn't get a broadcast tuner, so that he couldn't pick up TV stations. Knowing how enticing TV is, he couldn't risk wasting the time.

As if that weren't radical enough, he disconnected his car radio so that he could think better in the car. He took baths instead of showers so that he could accomplish things while the water ran and read while he soaked. (1)

Discussion: What are some things that you and others you know do to maximize your time?

Activity: What Could You Accomplish in Seven Years?

Want a shocker? Take the average amount of time that you watch TV per day or play video games per day, e.g., two hours (below the national average). Do you realize that over a period of 60 years, you will spend the equivalent of 7 ½ years sitting in front of the TV every waking hour of the day?! Imagine what a person could accomplish in 7 ½ years! 

• In some fields, you could complete college, a Masters Degree and Doctorate.
• Become an accomplished guitar or keyboard player.
• Immersing yourself in another culture and becoming fluent in another language.  
• Become really good at several sports.)

[To really make it sink in, go through the math with your group, letting students help with calculators. Here it is: 2 hours is 1/8 of the waking hours of a day. So 1/8 of all my waking time is spent watching TV. Thus, 1/8 of my 60 years are spent watching TV [60 divided by 8]. This gives me 7.5 years of time in which every waking hour of time was spent watching TV or playing video games.

Another way to figure it is: 2 hours x 365 (days per year) = 730 total hours of TV per year. Divide this by 16 to get the total number of days of that year that I would have spent every waking hour (16 hours) watching TV (45.625 days). Multiply this by 60 to get the total number of 16 hour days I would have spent totally on TV over a period of 60 years (2737.5). Divide this by 365 to find the total amount of years I would have spent watching TV every single waking hour of each day.] I come up with 7.5 years of spending every waking moment watching TV!]

So, what would you like to accomplish in 7.5 years? 1 - Earn a Doctorate? 2 – Become an accomplished musician? 3 – Master a field? 4 – Become formidable at a sport? 5 - Or, simply watch 2 hours of TV per day?

Illustration: In the year 1723, a seventeen year-old boy arrived in Philadelphia without a penny to his name. By age 42, he retired, wealthy. Few men, before or since have ever been as successful as Benjamin Franklin. He gave credit for his many inventions and business successes to a list of 13 principles that he followed. Principal #6 involved his use of time. Here it is:

Industry: Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.

More Hints on Effective Time Management

• Use a planner, such as a Day-timer, Franklin, or home-made. I like having a page for each day and a calendar with a month-in-view.
• At the beginning of each week and month, look over your calendar to make sure your goals and special events get calendared.
• Use TV or games as rewards, after completing your most important tasks. 
• Discover your most productive times of day and plan your most important or most difficult tasks for those times.
• Find which settings work best with which tasks.

5 – Work Hard

For every person who climbs the ladder of success, there are a dozen waiting for the elevator. (Kathy Griffith)

Have a purpose in life, and having it, throw into your work such strength of mind and muscle as God has given you. (Thomas Carlyle)

6 – Don’t Get Discouraged

You've got to get to that stage in your life when going for it is more important than winning or losing.  (Tennis Champion Arthur Ashe)

Make sure that your short-term goals are doable. Remember, even small amounts of time devoted to a goal each day add up to a lot over time. If you keep failing, you might want to adjust your goals.  

Action Point

Activity: Let’s do something to ensure that our great plans don’t become just another New Year’s Resolution. If we’re convinced that achieving short-term goals is a major key to achieving our dreams in life, let’s each take one goal and have a group of people in this class hold us accountable to work on it each week.

Divide into groups of no more than four. Each share one short-term goal that you’d really like to stick with over time. Now exchange phone numbers and commit to check up on each other at least weekly, either at school or by phone, to hold you accountable to your goal.    

Additional Resources:

Check out Day-Timer’s articles on time management at  http://www.daytimer.com 

Helpful articles on managing your time to succeed at school from the University of Waterloo, Canada - http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infocs/Study/study_skills.html 

23 time management techniques from St. John's University: http://www.csbsju.edu/academicadvising/help/23tmt.html 

Helpful time management article: http://www.tsuccess.dircon.co.uk/timemanagementtips.htm

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