A person with a five-million turnover says, “I have no time, my family complains I get home late every evening.” Another, with a 50-million turnover, equally agitated, bitterly complains he has no time and reaches home late. Those at 500 million, five billion all face the same problem. If time taken were dependent upon their work, then the person with five million would come home at 7 pm, 50 million at 8 pm, 500 million at 9 pm and the five billion would never reach home! But that is not true.

What has gone wrong with time management? A cloud of ignorance hangs over the entire management personnel. Presidents, prime ministers, CEOs, and the rest are being held hostages of time. They have sold their time. Lost control over time. And run around like chicken without a head. Remember, when you sell your time you have sold yourself.

Time management therefore is work management. And work management directly relates to self-management.

Self-management is determined by your inner constitution. Your physical body is merely a vehicle carrying your inner personality which is constituted of the mind and the intellect. The mind comprises impulses, feelings, emotions, likes and dislikes.

Beyond the mind lies the intellect which thinks, reasons, judges, analyses, decides. Thus there is a feeling equipment and a thinking equipment. A simple illustration clarifies their functioning. A diabetic person may be fond of sweets. His mind wants it. His intellect reasons and rejects it. Such conflicts arise in different facets of life.

Thinking is an art, a skill, a technique. Like playing golf, bridge or the violin. The world lacks this fundamental concept of thinking. Deprived of intellectual development people all over have developed a herd instinct. Hardly anyone questions one’s own course of life. You all did go through schools and universities. Why did you do so? The standard answer is that everybody does so. Thereafter you joined a profession or business. Why? Because everybody does so.

Then you enter into marriage. Why? Does anybody step back and think on this issue? You got married because you followed others. There are six reasons why anybody gets married to anybody. If you find out even a few of them you could claim yourself to be a thinking person. Thus no one really thinks. Alas! Human life has become a trail of herd instinct.

Actions are executed by the body. But the body by itself cannot act. It is the mind or intellect that propels the body to act. When the mind impels actions, they are deemed impulsive. When the intellect directs actions they are considered discriminative. Human sanity is determined by the full application of the intellect. When the intellectual discrimination yields to the mind’s demands one at first becomes emotional, then deteriorates further to eccentric, hysterical, and even insane.

Self-management is intellect directing, policing, and controlling the mind’s activities. No educational institution in the world is designed to develop the intellect. Schools and universities provide mere knowledge, intelligence. You use that knowledge to make a living. You go to medical or engineering school to learn the subject to trade on people who do not know it.

So too to a business, law or other school. These schools do not provide anything more than a living. A human being is not designed to feel content with just making a living. Consequent upon the lack of development of the intellect, you are unable to steer your life properly. Even to get on with your partner at business or home. The divorce rate in the US has shot up to an alarming rate of 70%. The human race needs a strong intellect to programme life’s course.

The knowledge acquired from external sources again needs an intellect to use it in life. Not every surgeon can come upon the technique of a kidney transplant. Nor every engineer designs an Eiffel tower. For all that you need to build an intellect. An intellect is developed by oneself as opposed to intelligence acquired from teachers and textbooks. No time management is possible unless you have developed the intellect. The lack of intellect is made up by long hours of hard work.

Time management is the proper programming of your work using a sharp intellect. The important aspect of time management is backward planning. Backward planning is fixing the goal you wish to achieve in life and programming your efforts backwards. You may want to become a billionaire, prime minister or Wimbledon champion.

Determine that first. Then find out what time is available for you to achieve that end. Next assess your capacity to reach the target. You may stretch a little but the goal set must be realistic. You will have to analyse the contributory factors necessary to achieve that — material and human resources, labour climate, force majeure, and the like. Take all those into account before you fix the timeframe and plan your work backwards.

For a target set for 40 years, you need to plan your work for the first 20 years, 10 years, five, this year, month, week and today. Take into consideration all possible exigencies, emergencies, impediments, both external and internal. Having managed your time and work thus, you would never be caught unawares. Hence time management is not looking at what I have to do today, next month, year, etc. In essence, time management is self-management. Self-management involves the building of a strong intellect to balance the work-time equation.

(From a discourse to the MBA programme at the Kellogg School Of Management, Northwestern University)