Self-discipline, time management

Ghanaian Times

Thu 08th Jan, 2026 06:58

NAPOLEON Hill says that, “If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self.” There is perhaps no area of your life in which self-discipline is more important than in the way you manage your time. Time management is a core discipline that largely determines the quality of your life. As Peter Drucker said, “You cannot manage time; you can only manage yourself.”

According to Brian Tracy, time management is really LIFE management, personal management, management of yourself rather than of time or circumstances. “Time is perishable; it cannot be saved. Time is irreplaceable; nothing else will do. Time is irretrievable; once it is gone or wasted, you can never get it back. Finally, time is indispensable, especially for accomplishments of any kind. All achievement, all results, all success requires time.”

Time cannot be saved
The fact is that you cannot save time; you can only spend it differently. You can only reallocate your time usage from areas of low value to areas of high value. Herein lies the key to success, and the requirement for self-discipline.

Time management is the ability to choose the sequence of events. By exerting your self-discipline with regard to time, you can choose what to do first, second, and not at all. And you are always free to choose. You require tremendous self-discipline to overcome the procrastination and delay that holds most people back from great success. “Procrastination,” it is said, “is the thief of time.”

The Pareto Principle, the 20/80 rule, says that 20 per cent of the things you do account for 80 per cent of the value of what you accomplish. This means that 80 per cent of what you do is worth 20 per cent or less of the value of what you accomplish.

Assess the true value of your activities
Some things you do are five times and even 10 times more valuable than other things, even though they take the same number of minutes and hours. The most important things you do—the top 20 per cent—are usually big, difficult, and daunting. In contrast, the 80 percent of things that you do that make little or no difference to your life are usually fun, easy, and enjoyable. You can tell the value that something has to you by the amount of your time you invest in it. You always pay attention to and spend time on what you most value, whether it is your family, your health, your social or sports activities, or your money and career. It is only by looking at how you spend your time that you (and everyone else) know what is really important to you.

The essence of time management is for you to discipline yourself to set clear priorities—and then stick to those priorities. You must consciously and deliberately select the most valuable and important thing that you could be doing at any given time, and then discipline yourself to work solely on that task.

Personal strategic planning
In corporate strategic planning, the main focus is on increasing the “return on equity.” Equity in a business is defined as the amount of money invested in the business by the owners (aside from debt and money borrowed). The purpose of strategic planning is to find ways to organise and reorganize the business in such a way that the company is achieving a higher rate of return on this equity than it would be in the absence of the planning process.

Companies invest financial capital, but individuals invest “human capital.” Companies deploy financial assets, but your most vital assets are your mental, emotional, and physical energies. Your entire quality of life is determined by how you invest in these assets.

In personal strategic planning, your goal is to get the highest “return on energy” from your activities. Ken Blanchard refers to this as getting the highest “return on life.” Just as you would be careful about investing your money so as to ensure that you get the highest rate of return, you must be equally careful when you invest your time.

Think before acting
Before you commit to any time-consuming activity, you must always ask, “Is this the very best use of my time?” Lack of self-discipline in time management leads people to procrastinate their top tasks continually, causing them to spend more and more time on tasks of low or no value. And whatever you do repeatedly eventually becomes a habit.

Many people have developed the habit of procrastination, of putting off their major tasks and instead spending most of their time on activities that make very little difference in the long run.

Setting priorities
Brian Tracy suggests that setting priorities requires setting ‘posteriorities’ as well. A priority is something that you do more of and sooner, whereas a ‘posteriority’ is something you do less of or later. You are probably already overwhelmed with too much to do and too little time. Because of this, for you to embark on a new task, you must discontinue an old task. Getting into something new requires getting out of another activity.

Go through your life regularly and practice “creative abandonment”: Consciously determine the activities that you are going to discontinue so that you have more time to spend on those tasks that can really make a difference to your future.

Identify the consequences
One of the most important words in developing the discipline of time management is “consequences.” Something is important to the degree that it has serious potential consequences for completion or non-completion. “A task or activity is unimportant to the degree that it does not matter if it is done or not.”

For example, completing a course of study at the university can have enormous consequences that can impact your life for so many years. Completing a major task or project at work or making an important sale can have significant consequences for your job and your income.

On the other hand, drinking coffee, chatting with coworkers, reading the newspaper, surfing the Internet, or checking emails may be enjoyable, but these activities have few or no consequences. In other words, whether you do them or not makes little to no difference to your work or your life. However, it is precisely on these activities that most people spend most of their time.

Managing your time
Tracy proposes a simple time management system that you can use to overcome procrastination. It requires self-discipline, willpower, and personal organisation, but the payoff is huge. When you use this system, you can double or even triple your productivity, performance, output, and income.

Before you begin each day, start by making a list of everything you have to do that day. The best time to make this list is the evening before, at the end of the workday, so that your subconscious mind can work on your list of activities while you sleep. You will often wake up with ideas and insights for how to more effectively complete the tasks of the day.

Then apply the A B C D E Method to your list:
• A = “Must do”—Serious consequences for non-completion;
• B = “Should do”—Mild consequences for doing or not doing;
• C = “Nice to do”—No consequences whether you do it or not;
• D = “Delegate”—Everything you possibly can to free up more time for those things that only you can do.

The rule is that you should never do a B task when you have an A task left undone. You should never do a lower-value task when you have a higher-value task before you. Once you have organised your list using this system, discipline yourself to start on your A tasks.

You require tremendous discipline to set priorities and then stick to those priorities. You require the continuous exertion of discipline and willpower to overcome the procrastination that holds most people back. However, the more you discipline yourself to use your time well, the happier you will feel and the better will be the quality of your life in every area.

BY CAPT SAM ADDIAH (RTD)

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