Journey called Life (Activity Management)

taken from office.com

One of my main weakness is my inability to say no to requests for help/assistance. With this kind of inability, I sometimes find myself swamped with work and in the end, find myself unable to cope with everything, and end up doing nothing at all.

Last night I get to meet Uncle Charlie Chia, a very prominent Buddhist speaker in Kuala Lumpur. Those who had joined the Buddhists activities with me during my time in INTEC might have known him as well from his talks organized for us students in INTEC. Brother Jerry (I think it might be more suitable to call him uncle, since he is already older than my mom, but since he invented the Jerry's Rule: People younger than 15 years old can call me uncle, those who are older than 15 years old call me brother, I have no choice but to call him "brother") was also there along with Jen (We were there after our date :P) as well...

Well, it was a very nice meeting where both the elders shared their minds on issues that have been bugging us up till now.

One of the issues were the issue of time management. There are lots of activities lined up in our mind waiting to be done, but we seemed to have no time to finish them all, and in the end, the main priority (currently studies), got neglected.

University time is the time when we get involved in lots activities, within and outside of the curriculum, that may help us develop our soft skills (skills that can't be learned in class), for example, organizing a carnival. If within the committee there will be people who didn't do their jobs properly and thus placing strain on the others who are more committed.

Uncle Charlie had quoted a phrase from someone (i can't remember who exactly said this) which gave us lots of insights into this situation: "I don't manage time, I manage activities." What it means is that we have to learn on how to set our priorities and work with it. If we have lots of work/wishes piling on us, we will need to prioritize them. And start by doing what is the most important activity now. Our mind can only focus on one thing at a time. If we can complement it by focusing on one thing at a time, without worrying about the status of the other activities, we can proceed smoothly down the priority, and faster as well. The mind works best when things are organized, and prioritizing can help a lot of keeping everything oragnized :)

The other thing being discussed was the targets. Uncle Charlie told us that unachieved targets doesn't matter much. It's whether we did put in our best efforts throughout the whole proess that counts the most, because in the end, we can always tell us that, "I have done my best to ensure the success of the project, but circumstances doesn't allow everything to go smoothly as planned." BUT, you will certainly feel guilty if you didn't put in your best effort in getting things done, and more often than not, people are not going to be pleased with you (fired).

More often than not, you will find that you are unable to finish the things that are at the lowest level of your priority list. Not being able to do them doesn't mean that we have failed, it just mean that circumstances doesn't allow us to do everything.

So do your best in whatever that you are doing, prioritize well, and don't dwell in failures. Focus on how to be successful, Life's always rewarding of you think of it as so :)


seehua