​Every professional in the world wants to have better time management. It is an absolute obsession with some people. There are endless systems and strategies designed to help you get more done in less time. But do they really work? Well, that’s actually the wrong question to begin with. The first question is really ‘What is time management? To understand that, I would argue that you need to do some real thinking and understanding about the topic. Sure, I could give you one or two brief time management quotes which would serve as a definition, but I don’t believe that would really do the job.

I am of the belief that not only does time management mean different things to different people, in practical terms; but it should mean different things to different people because we all live different lives. As sure as we each live unique lives, we need to have our own time management approach to make those lives work well for each of us. So, I have provided you with a broad range of time management quotes which I hope will inspire you to think about what time management means to you and so, allow you to develop your understanding of how time management should work for you.

Beneath each of the time management quotes, I have provided my own interpretation to bring each of the time management quotes to life and, allow some application. Of course, you don’t have to automatically accept my interpretations. The intention of each of these time management quotes is to inspire you to think about what time management means to you and develop your understanding.

​This article is quite extensive and sizeable. To help you navigate the time management quotes, I have created the table of contents below. Just click on the quote that interests you and you will be taken straight to it. I have added another table of contents after the first 10 quotes to make it easier for you to navigate your way between the time management quotes which interest you most.

​If you are ready to start reading through these time management quotes, you can start here. These quotes are not intended to be in any particular order so feel free to move through these quotes as you see fit.

Enjoy!

​You would think that when you do something well, it can only be a good thing. After all, you have done a good job, one which you can be proud of. Surely, this can't help but make you more succesful?

Unfortunately, that is not the case. Too often, people think they are doing a great job because they are getting a lot done but ask yourself the following questions:

​I would argue that the answer to each of these questions is 'No'. Ultimately, your first priority is to ensure that you are performing the most important task you can complete. Only then should you consider how good a job you are doing.

​You cannot prepare perfectly for everything but that does not mean that you shouldn't take the time to prepare for the challenges that lie ahead. Within reason, the more preparation you do, the greater your chances of achieving a positive outcome.

Many times, you will find yourself pressed for time to complete an important task. In your eagerness, you decide to jump straight into the task to try to get it done. But when you do that, you will find that you waste a great deal of time, regularly checking to see where you are and what remains to be completed. As you complete each step of the task, you lose time attempting to work out what you need to do next.

It is far more effective to start slowly. Take the time to make the best plan you can before you start. This reduces the need to constantly check your progress and recalibrate. A good plan will serve like a checklist where you can quickly glance at ti and immediately determine what you need to do next.

​Resource: 6 Steps for productive planning

​I could not begin to count the number of times I heard my father tell others how hard he had been working. It is part of his generation to talk about work in terms of quantity. They like to discuss how hard they work and, the long hours they work as if they are a badge of honour.

Busyness is a disease. It leads to you spending all of your time completing tasks. At first this might sound like a good thing but it isn't. When you are busy and spend all of your time completing work, you don't get the time to plan and be creative. You don't get the opportunity to think clearly about what is the best use of your time.

​Productivity is about effectiveness i.e. getting the right things done. It is not about quantity. It doesn't matter how much you get done if you are not doing the right things. In fact, if you want to idenitfy somebody with poor time management; look for a busy person, not a lazy person. Busy people have the best of intentions but the worst of applicaton.

​Resource: Why you need an effective organisation system

​I remember many years ago when I first read 'Your Erroneous Zones' by the late Dr. Wayne W. Dyer. There was a chapter which discussed the two most useless emotions - worry and guilt. Guilt occurs when we hang onto things which went wrong in the past while worry occurs when we fear that something might go wrong in the future. When we look objectively, it is easy to see how guilt and worry are a waste of time because we can't change the past and the future might never arrive; at least that version of the future might never arrive.

These factors are just as important to time management. You can't change the past and when you waste your time thinking about it; you are not getting anything of value done. As for the future, it hasn't arrived yet so, you can't do anything ​there either. The only time you have to get your most valuable work done is right here, right now i.e. in the present. So, you need to focus your mind and your actions on what you can do right now.

The first steps you take to move away from your past begin with the actions you take now and; the first steps you take towards a brighter future start now. By all means, learn the lessons of the past and have a vison for a brighter future but focus your thoughts and actions on the present.

​When ​I ask people why they want to improve their time management, they often reply with reasons which are totally focused on money e.g. aiming for a promotion; improve their job opportunities. These are certainly noble goals but they are not the ultimate goals. Money is a just a mechanism to help you create the life you really want. There are many ways to achieve the things you want without money too. I am not trying to discourage you from increasing your income but the money should not be the focus of what you trying to get from improved time management.

I have spoken to many people about their lives and what they wish they had done differently. I have never had anyone tell me that they wish they had made more money. They are more likely to wish they had:​

​Basically, as we move through our lives, we realise that the real joy in life comes from how we spend our time; not how we spend our money. Money is certainly helpful and there is nothing wrong with wanting to increase your income but increasing your income must not come at the cost of your time because spending money will  never compensate you for the time and experiences lost.

​As we go through school, we are t​aught about time e.g. how to read a clock. But we are not taught the truth about time. We are taught the 'Chronos' approach to time whereby every second is equal and each minute is equal etc. This actually fosters a lack of apprreciation of time where when we waste time, we think we can easily make up for it later. But we can't.

The more appropriate appraoch to time is 'Kairos' whereby the value of any given moment of time is determined by how that moment of time is spent. Therefore, a day spent watchng meaningless television is not likely to be as valuable as a day spent doing something you really love. Opportunities are there to be taken and you realise that if you don't take them; they might not come around again.

​No matter which approach you take to time, there are going to be times when you have to pass up opportunities because you have more important things to do. But when you adopt a 'Kairos' approach to life, you seize more of those special moments and where possble, you will find a way to adjust your time management to ensure that you can get your important work done and still seize the opportunities. You are not prepared to let life pass you by.

​Resource: 5 Core principles of time management

​The calendar is one of the most powerful tools available to those who want to manage their time more effectively but only if it is used correctly. Too often, I see clients who want to sfuff every new task or project into their calendar. They want to set aside time for these things but in doing so, they fill their calendar to the brim and they are left with no time for the real opportunities that come their way.

If you are someone who tries to stuff everything into their calendar, you will know the chaos that can arise when plans change. You have to try and move everything in your calendar around while ensuring that the tasks with deadlines get done on time. Usually, one of two things happens. Either you miss deadlines or you end up working extra hours to get everything done.

The proper way to use a calendar is to only enter the tasks/projects/appointments which are time or date specific. If they do not have to be done at a specific time or date; they don't belong in a calendar. This way, every thing with a deadline gets done on time and with the remainder of your time, you can determine the best thing to do with just one simple question:

' What is the most important task I can complete with the time and resources available to me?'

With this apporach, you wiill spend a lot more time doing what is important whille also having time for the opportunities which will inevitably come your way.

Resource: Use your calendar effectively

​I have already; mentioned the dangers of being busy. Those who value busyness don't really care what they are doing as long as they are seen to be working; as long as they can brag about how hard they work. But those who brag about how hard they work could never tell you about what they have done because they wil have done little of what is truly important. In fact, they often don't know what is important.

Every major time management decision should be based on what you are trying to achieve. Knowing what you are trying to achieve is what allows you to determine which actions are important and which are not. So, before you spring into action, take the time to be clear about the outcomes you are trying to achieve.

When you are clear on the outcomes, you can determine the actions you believe ​will help you to achieve those outcomes. On a daily basis, you can then focus on the actions you need to take while having a weekly check-in to see what progress you are making towards your desired outcomes. When everything is focused towards your outcomes like this, you are much more likely to manage your time effectively.

​What is the most common excuse you hear when somebody fails to do what they promised to do? There are a number of common excuses but the following excuse is definitely one of the most popular:

'I didn't have the time.'

You had the same amount of time as everybody else. You just didn't put any focus on the thing that didn't get done. It wasn't important enough for you to dedicate the required time to it. You chose otherwise and valued something else as most important. An unclear focus leads to bad decisions which in turn leads to poor time management.

Occassionally, the unclear focus will be because you have far too much work on your plate. In this instance, you need to clear your focus by getting some of that stuff off your plate e.g.:

​In reality, there are very few things which really matter. You need to get clear about what they are and remain focused on them.

​Once you have worked out what is really important to you and you are committed to getting it done, you should be doing it at the first opportunity. Too often, ​you get distracted by what ​is urgent but not important and that will be the case as long as you are unclear about what is important.

If it is not important, urgency is ​irrelevant. Just because somebody else is screaming in your face in an attempt to get it done; that doesn't mean you should be doing it. Just because a deadline is rapidly approaching does not mean you should give the urgent but unimportant task priority. 

Once you know what know what is important, that is what gets priority. The earlier you get the important work done, the more important work you can get done. Don't waste the present moment completing unimportant work because others are making demands. Each moment should be focused on doing the most important thing you could be doing in that moment.

​How many times have you wasted time putting out fires only to realise later that the fire was not a big deal and it wasn't really threatening you?

Many years ago, I was on a time management course with a lady who ​was a manager in a Garden Center. We were asked to make a list of all the tasks we had performed over the previous few days. This lady informed us that she had, three times in the previous week, spent an hour or more helping employees find tools that they had misplaced. They had come to her when they couldn't find the tool they had misplaced. Her response had been to drop every thing to help them find it.As a result, she had to work extra hours to get her most important work done.

That is a rather extreme example of stomping on ants when there are elephants which need to be dealt with.She had not been the one who misplaced the tools and she certainly wasn't teaching her staff to take responsibilty for their actions by finding the tool for them.

Each day we will encounter small problems which could eat up ​ourr time if we allow them too. These are tiny ants i.e. a nuisance but not worth fussing endlessly over. A successful day; arises when we deal with the elephants i.e. the big important tasks which we need to complete.

So, either learn to deal with the ants quickly or, if possible, ignore them and let somebody else deal with them. Spend your time feeding the elephants.

​Every day is an opportuntity to advance towards your dreams and goals. It is also an opportunity to live the life you want to live by spending time with the people you love and/or doiing the things you love. You want to make the most of every day to ensure that you enjoy your life as much as possible. When you look back upon your life, the level of enjoyment you experienced will be determined by how you spent each day.

​Just as you can waste a day by doing nothing of value or importance; you can waste a day by trying to do too much. You end up doing nothing right and falling to get the proper enjoyment from your day. For example, what is the point in spending time with your kids if you are going to spend all of that time on the phone or reading the paper?

There are two key areas to your life - professional and personal . You need to know what is important in each area and try to ​do something of value in each area daily for your p​ersonal life and on each working day for your professional life. That is how you start to make each day count.

​You may have a tendency, when you see successful people, to assume that they have always been successful. That they have always had things go their way. But the biggest myth about successful people is the assumption that they are different to everybody else. They do some different things and may believe some different things but they don't have any knowledge or skills that you couldn't develop.

What's more, they are subject to the same forces of life as everybody else. They will have good times and bad times. They will face challenges and epxerience weaknesses just like everybody else. It doesn't matter how much money you make or how much success you have; you cannot escape the realities of life.

Nothing in life is permanent, including life itself. So, next time you are going through a rough patch, which you will; do not wallow in your own self pity and do not see the situation as helpless. Instead, determine what you need to do to  turn things around and take action. If you need help seek it out. Because as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, you can turn bad experiences in to great opportunities to learn, develop, grow and improve your circumstances.

Resource: How to overcome your procrastination by learning from failure

​As I stated earlier, you will experience some tough times along your journey through life. You can see these experiences as the end of the world but you wiould be seriously overreacting. If you are using a smart approach to life, you will see them as an opportunity to learn some valuable lessons whcih, when implemented, will help you to improve your performance. 

Because very few peopole ever achieve real success in their life without taking a few wrong turns and experiencing some failures along the way. You need to remember that nobody is born with all the ​skills and knowledge that they need. Learning, developing and growing are fundamental parts of life and; some of the most enjoyable parts of life.

If you see failure as a dead end, you need to change your view. Because failure is only a step on the path to success. You learn from it and you move on. When you see failure for what it really is, you don't have any need to fear failure. 

​Earllier in this article, I mentioned the need to have a clear focus on the outcomes you are trying to achieve. One of the reasons for doing this is that you would be shocked at how many people pass up the opportunity to enjoy their desired outcomes in order to keep chasing goals they don't really want. 

It's time to stop rushing and start living and enjoying your life.You can pursue your ​goals and enjoy your life at the same time.

​To give you a​n embarrassing example from my own life, my passport is almost 3 years out ot date. I keep talking about how I want to go on a holiday when I hit a certain point in my business. This is ridiculous to keep putting off my enjoyment like this. I have effectively been saving time by not taking holidays so that I could then spend that time on my business. While my business is important to  me, the reason I do what I do is so that I can enjoy my life. So,why put it off.

Thankfully, I have copped on to myself and I am getting a new passport and; I will heading away for a few days in the first half of this year. In fact, I have now decided to change the way that I reward myself for the work I do for the business. Instead of waiting to achieve goals which are not fully within my control, I am now going to reward myself based on the work I complete,

For example, I might say that in the first quarter of the year I am going to complete projects A, B and C and when I complete them, I am going to take a mini-break to Spain.

​This approach ensures that I continue to work hard but that in doing so, I don't forget to enjoy my life. I just need to make sure that I set myself a realistic workload and an appropriate workload.

Resource: Why you must know what you want - get focused; get results

​In my first real job, i worked for a bank. I had terrible time mangement and I was missing some deadlines and failing to get as much work done as possible. One of the biggest challenges I faced was failure to focus on what was important to my goals. Instead, I was agreeing to do what others wanted me to do, whether it was in my goals or not. At first, my time management problems were not too obvious but as my workload increased, it became obvious to me.

I went to my manager and requested that they send me on a time management course. I was told that they would do that. ​Over a year later, I had enough of the company ( I had suffered harassment) so I handed in my notice to leave the company. Then, during my notice period, to my complete shock, they decided to send me on a time management course.

You might think that's bizarre, waiting until I was leaving to have me trained in time management, and you would be right but we do it ourselves on a regular basis too. How many times ​have you tried to push through with your work when you needed to:

​These are all examples of things which will slow you down in the short term but will help you to get the job done to a higher standard. Many of them will also ensure that you can do job better and faster in future. But rather than pause to get back on track, you choose to push on through and hope that everything works out for the best.

​It is better to do the job right than do it fast but wrong. So, slow down and do what really needs to be done before you rush head first into a situation you cannot manage.

​Too many people treat time management like it is the be all and end all. They forget that time management is about ensuring that ​you can live the life ​you truly want, or as close to it as possible. Time management is supposed to serve you, not the other way around.

You probably don't need to be told that if you don't learn to manage your time effectively, you are wasting some of your life. Every moment you waste is a moment you will not get back so, you need to ensure that you are not wasting precious moments doing things which are not going to contribute to the life you really want to live.

Just as importantly, you can't be overly focused on time management; so much so that you deny yourself the opportunity to take advantage ot the experiences and opportunities which come your way. Don't become so obsesssed with productivity that you forget to live. Remember that life is to be lived and real time management is about quality not quantity.

​There is nothing wrong with having money and in some cases money can make the achievement of happiness a little easier e.g. you can hire people do work for you that you would otherwise have to do yourself. But this benefit only stretches so far. Once you get past paying people to do work for you, you are still left in a position where you have the same amount of time as everybody else. Money cannot manafacture more time for you. And as you move up the corportate or social ladder and, you delegate/outsource work, your workload increases to compensate for that which you get off your plate.

Living the best life you can, professionally and personally, requires you to make smart decisions. There will always be more to do than you can possibly do. There will always be numerous options for what you can do in any given moment of time. To maximise your time, you need to be able to make the right choices.

So, just remember that it is great to increase your income but dont' be fooled into thinking that it is going to make your time management less important.

One of the biggest challenges in time management is procrastination and; one of the biggest causes of procrastination is overwhelm. You have a massive project facing you which is going to take some time to complete.The finish line might be so far in the future that you struggle to see how you can ever get it finished. It can be very hard to motivate yourself.

The key in this situation is to remember that each project is completed one task at a time. You focus on that task, do your best and then move on to the next task; being sure to learn any lessons you need to learn along the way.

Life is lived the very same way. If you tried to look at your whole life in one go, you would be overwhlemed. You need to live one day at a time. Do your best each day, learn from your mistakes / failures and move on to the next day.

​I have repeatedly stressed that you will make mistakes and experience failures along the way. These should never be seen as permanaent situations. You can learn from what went wrong, implement the lessons and get back on track. In fact, mistakes and failures are often the best lessons that you can experience. Read up on any succesful person and they will tell you how they really learned from something that went wrong.

Of course, you don't have to wait for failures and mistakes to learn. When you have a clear vison for what you want to do with your life, you can then determine the knowledge and skills you are going to need to get there. When you compare these knowledge and skills with what you already possess, you can identify where there are gaps which you need to close. You can then create a learning plan which will help you to close that gap.

Life is constantly changing and you need to keep up. My parents generation didn't have access to computers now, every kid has a computer (i.e. smart phone) in their pocket.  If you are not prepared to keep learning you are not going to stand still, you are going to start falling behind.

Resource: Create your own learning plan with Accelerate Your Performance

​I have always found that good quotes encourage you to pause and reflect; thus, increasing your understanding of the topic. In this article, I have provided a broad range of time management quotes which are intended to do just that for your time management. Time management strategies and tactics are fantastic but only if you have a good understanding of what time management means to you and what you are actually trying to achieve with your life. I am hopeful that the time management quotes, provided above, will help you to ​develop your understanding and make better decisions which will then help you to make the most of your time and your life.