IS it just me, or is this year moving at an even faster pace than last month? My intentionality of making my 24 hours more meaningful has heightened. A few days ago, I was on a zoom call and after 10 minutes, the main person was not on the call, so I decided to leave to attend to something that would not waste my time. I received a message two minutes later that she was ready and I replied that I was already engaged in something else. She expressed disappointment because we had allotted one hour for the meeting. Imagine someone thinking that because one hour is allotted for a meeting, it is okay to wait? I explained to her that time is the most valuable of all resources and I value every second of my 24 hours, and it will not be squandered. My cousin Clemency gave me a unique bag with a working clock on it and it was not given because I am late, but for the uniqueness. Too many people squander time, even without realising the value of it.
I read an article by Myles Munroe that will help us to redeem time:

“Literally, to redeem time means to buy back time. It is like getting back time or holding time back and stopping it from passing by. If you look at it at face value, that is impossible.
However, that’s not true. The concept of redeeming time originated from the Bible, and there, “redeeming time” does not imply bringing back our past years.In this article, I have highlighted 10 simple and actionable steps you can take to redeem the time of your life. Doing them will help you make your time worth more than it would have done. It will increase your productivity and help you achieve more in lesser periods.

These steps are both applicable to specific time-bound projects, and your life’s purpose in general.

How To Redeem Your Time by Myles Munroe
1. Document a plan

If you must make the most of your time or make your time worth more than it currently does, you must identify goals and plans that you would like to achieve with your time. If you don’t have a goal, then a plan, there is no measure to how you have been able to maximise your time.

So the first step to redeeming your time is to determine what you want your time to be worth. For example, I want to get a doctorate by the age of 25, or more broadly, I want to live a life that fulfills “this purpose.“

Once that is determined, you then document a plan that will help you accomplish that goal. A goal without a plan is simply a wish. A plan is the step-by-step actions you must take from where you are currently, to where you want to be.

Having a written-down plan saves you from waking up daily and wondering what to do. It also saves you from constantly trying to remember what you said you would do that you didn’t write down.

2. Establish your priorities

After documenting your plan, the next step to redeem time is to get straight what matters most to the fulfilment of that purpose, goal, or plan. Among the several things you need to do in following that plan, clearly define which are the most important and write them down in order of priorities.

It is common that in trying to reach a goal we get ourselves involved in many activities that aren’t bad in themselves, but aren’t major contributing factors to the fulfilment of those goals. If you stick with those things, you will waste so much time and achieve less.

For example, setting up a business, choosing a brand colour and logo, and determining the perfect office layout, are all important steps, but aren’t as important as getting the product or service that will be offered to an irresistible state.

They aren’t as important as making sales, which keeps the business alive. If you spend all your time on secondary matters, by the time the primary matters are established, you might discover that you have to revisit the secondary matters all over again. That is wasted time.

3. Pursue only your passion or high-value tasks.

Simple truth: you can’t do everything!

Although I have stated already that you set your priority straight, it is also important that what you are doing is worth doing in the first place. This step is to now revisit your plan and priorities and strike out things that aren’t necessary.

In building a business, as we have considered earlier, if attending business club meetings is part of the items on your list, you will want to revisit it to see if it’s truly worth your time and contributes to the success of your business, or if it’s just one of those activities.

If it doesn’t, not only should it not be at the top of your list, it should be struck out completely. In your life broadly, you will want to ensure that what you are pursuing is what you should be pursuing and not just something you got into because it seems nice, or because everyone else is doing it.

For example, if you don’t pursue your passion, you might get tired along the way, and might need to start a new pursuit that can give you the feeling of fulfilment.

That will be a setback to redeeming time as against going after your passion (or other high-value tasks) from the outset.
4. Protect your plans and priorities

Except you are no longer on earth or you don’t have plans, distractions and urgencies must come. If you want to redeem the time, you must be very active in guarding and protecting your plans and priorities.
This will demand that you turn down several invitations: stay away from some relationships, and avoid certain conversations without guilt.

There is so much that can be achieved if we are focused– even more than we think. For the most time in life, people didn’t get success not because they didn’t have plans, but because they got distracted along the way.

Not every open door is an opportunity, and not every good thing is right for you. You must possess the ability to recognise distractions, and the strong will to say no. To help you keep up with this, there is a principle taught by Derek Sivers in his book, Hell Yes Or No, that says you should always say no to any invitation except your response is hell yes.

Meaning whatever you aren’t excited about, whatever you don’t think you will want to stick all out with, should not even be accommodated in the first place. That way you can save up time and energy to focus only on your plans and priorities.

5. Identify your values

Values are guiding principles that guide the coordination of a life. They are self-set rules and regulations that define what is right, wrong, important, and worthy in your life.

To redeem your time or make the most of your life, your life must be guided by values personally set by yourself.

Your boundaries should be wide enough to include checks that keep you committed to your assignment, checks that will help you ensure you don’t get distracted, checks that will ensure you continually grow, and checks that will notify you when any area of your life needs attention.

Having values that guide your life makes decision-making easier and keeps you on safe ground. If your values are wide enough and cover all the necessary checks, you can be sure that whatever is not within your value system is something you shouldn’t opt-in for.

Sometimes you might have a reason not to take certain decisions, but forget when the time to take the decision comes. If you have built a value system, you don’t need to remember the reasons, you only need to remember your value system (restrictions) since they were built on solid principles.”

I will be sharing some more on this topic next week, because I believe it will be helpful because some of us are still fine-tuning the vision for 2023. I hope you receive value from this amazing content as we continue to celebrate this beautiful journey called Life BEYOND THE RUNWAY