It is commonly said that time flies. If it really does, then it is up to us to be the pilots. In life what you invest determines what you harvest; what you sow determines what you reap. The good news is that God has given us the seeds we need to create the desired harvest in our lives. One of such seeds is time. Some spend their time while others invest their time. Some use their present to buy the future while others sell their future to buy momentary pleasure. Someone once pray teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom. We must convert time to wisdom and then wisdom will bring to us money, peace of mind, joy, love and happiness that we all desire. We must therefore convert our time to wisdom first and to convert time to wisdom we must commit to learning.

Therefore we need to take the long look and don’t seek for short term satisfaction. If you need to go to school and you have the opportunity please go to school. If you have the opportunity to attend a seminar please go ahead and attend a seminar, the quality of your life cannot be better than the quality of the knowledge that you have. Knowledge they say is power; it is potential power if you know how to use it well. Take time to read, until you know more you cannot be more. What you learn determines what you earn. The difference between learn and earn is the ‘L’.

I encourage you today buy a book, read a book invest in yourself; invest in the quality of thoughts in your mind. Convert your time to wisdom and then wisdom will bring the money and the promotion and the success that you want. So, for us to convert time to wisdom, we must commit to learning. The qualities of our lives cannot be better than the quality of our thoughts. If our thinking improves with time – time becomes an asset; if our thinking remains the same over time – time becomes a burden so easily because the whole world is making progress in knowledge. 

We also need to change the quality of your thoughts. As a man thinketh in his heart so is he. The major difference between the rich and the poor is the way they think. To think like a rich person you must read the book that are written by rich people; you must chose rich people as your friends and mentors, there is power in association and then go to school; attend a course. Why not be an apprentice to someone who is already successful; why not invest money in buying books or going to a library and read books and listen to tapes. You must always remember your number one asset in this world is your mind. Upgrade your thinking you upgrade your life.

To make the most of your time, you must develop the ability to set goals. When you control the events of your life you have gained control of your life. You must always remember that you gain control of the events of your life by setting specific goals. Without goals success is not possible. Living your life without daily goals, weekly goals, and yearly goals, makes you like someone playing football without any goalpost on the football field. Whatever direction you kicked the ball in you cannot succeed at the end of the day you will pack up in frustration. Life for a person without goal is exactly like that; at the end of the day is frustration. In fact without goals the more time you have the more frustrated you become. You must set specific goals, it takes time, it takes effort but you don’t have a choice.

We must develop goal setting skills and our goals must be achievable; they must be realistic, of course they must be able to cause the blood to run in your vein but they should not be beyond your reach or else you will be frustrated even before you start. Your goals must be believable they should not create mountain of doubt in your mind and your goals must be concrete. If you are setting goals for your finances state exactly the amount, if it is education state the specific qualification and give a deadline. You must set short range goals, medium range goals and long range goals and you must establish your roles you may be a husband or a wife at the same time somebody’s daughter or son, you may also be father or mother to someone and an employee at your work place establish all those roles and when you set your goals daily, weekly, monthly goals make sure you cover all those areas with that your success will be well rounded.

Time is money they say in the business world. Actually what they mean is that time has value. You and I must appreciate that time is a resource, it has value and time is a convertible resource. We can convert it to money, we can convert it to love, we can convert it to successful relationships if we invest time in our relationships with our husbands or wives, with our children or even with our friends. Time can be converted to knowledge if we go to school if we take time to read or to attend a seminar. In fact, when we do that we are converting time to wisdom. 

It is important that you value your time. In our part of the world we have no respect for time but if you want your story to be different you must begin to use your time to achieve powerful goals.In the developed world they have achieved development and acquire wealth because they have discovered that time is as valuable as money. This discovery of the value of time led to the invention of the clock. If we can measure time then we can measure money. If we can measure the rate of time then we can determine the rate of its conversion to money and that discovery and the invention of the clock laid the foundation for the ability to create other precision measuring equipment.

There is something called African time and it is an illusion, it is an excuse for failure and tardiness and poverty. There is no ‘African Time’ the whole world runs on twenty four hour a day. What you do with your twenty four hours will determine whether you will be rich or poor. What we do with our twenty four hours a day determine whether we will be rich or poor as a nation. Remember, time is a convertible resource and time is the measurement of the passage of your life; time actually is you life. When you kill time you are not committing murder you are committing suicide.

The good thing about time is that God has given it to all human beings in equal measure. You have equal opportunities with other people to succeed. In the Chinese language they said the way time is written is exactly the way opportunity is written. Your time is your opportunity; you waste your time you waste your opportunity.

How to manage Time
Delegation: To delegate means you must learn to pass on the job to someone else so you can focus on the most important things. You will never have time to do all the things you will love to do however, you can always pass some of your job on to someone else. As you move up in life you must learn to drop some of the assignment that you have to other people; you must have this rule in your life that you will do the things that only you must do. Don’t ever allow yourself to believe that except you are there nothing will be done or that things can’t work, you will kill yourself, that way you will get so overloaded; you won’t have time to move to higher levels and higher assignment you must learn to delegate.

Goal Alignment: you must have the courage to turn down opportunities that do not align with your goals and with your values that is absolutely important. In the bid to please people we lose our destinies; we lose our time and our time is our life. So, in the bid not to annoy people or to disappoint them you may spend your time helping people to achieve their goals while you don’t achieve your own goal. One of the most important word you will ever utter from your mouth is the word ‘no’ if you say no when it will not pay you to agree to a proposal you have delivered yourself from failure and interestingly you will win the respect of people around you because then they will know you are a person of purpose.

Invest Time: when you get a salary or payment, remember it’s an exchange for the use of your time, you must ensure that you give adequate time for the compensation you get from your employer. Don’t use your employer’s time to charter or watch home video or to attend ceremonies. If you are paid per hour how much will you really earn in a month? If you do more than you are being paid for you will eventually be paid more for what you are doing. I encourage avoid those time wasters in your life. Invest your time into acquiring knowledge and that knowledge will bring everything else that you want.

                                                                                                            Ogunkunle Niyi (Aca)
                                                                                                            General Manager Audit
                                                                                                            Olajide and Associates Nig.
                                                                                               www.olajideassociates.com