I Bought The Monk's Ferrari by Ravi Subramanian

the same room ... with the five-year strategic plan.' And he walked out leaving no room for any discussion, leaving behind ten helpless souls wondering what had hit them. What happened after that was nothing short of a miracle. In the next five days the five-year strategic plan was delivered and even the audit preparations did not suffer. The organisation cleared the audit with flying colours.
    If work can be prioritised and time managed effectively, everything is bound to fall on schedule. People who realise this are the ones who climb the ladder of success, and they do this quite fast because they value their time.
    In the end, when Rajnish asked for prioritisation of the activity in question, despite people asking for sixty days, it got done in five days flat. Now, think of what you can achieve if you start doing this on your own.
    If Rajnish had not prioritised and let the plan take its own course, audit would have come and gone in thirty days. Work on putting the strategic plan documents together, would have begun after the audit and it would have stretched for another thirty days, during which everything else would have come to a standstill. By doing what he did, Rajnish not only hastened the audit preparation by cutting on the available time but also saved thirty days post audit which were put to use for other productive work. He saved time not only for himself, but also for his team.
    If you want to own the Ferrari, would you not want time to drive it around the town? What is the point in acquiring the Ferrari if it is parked in the garage all the time? You need to manage your time in such a manner that you get time to drive the Ferrari and show it to the world, as well.
    There is an age-old proverb: Work expands itself to completely fill in the available time.
    This speaks of poor time management by most people. And unfortunately, it is true. I read about a world class organisation which had over five thousand employees. It worked six days a week. A regular 'Voice of Employee' survey showed that employees believed that they were extremely stretched and had no time for themselves and their families—in other words, no 'work-life' balance. It was so serious that the management decided that they needed to shift to a five-day week. This would give the employees a two day break.
    As a result, the organisation lost a day every week. But the CEO took a very interesting call. He said that for the next three months, the organisation would not hire anyone to supplement capacity, but would do it after three months, if required. It was expected that people would work longer hours for five days to take care of the loss of one working day. The CEO then started keeping records of the 'in' and 'out' timings of everyone without them knowing that they were being timed. An interesting finding emerged. There was no change whatsoever, in the time that people came in or left for home. The ones who were used to leaving at 6.30 p.m., left at the same time as before, the ones who stayed till 8.30 p.m. every day, stayed till 8.30 p.m. even now. Surprisingly, there was no drop in productivity of employees in these three months. The performance of the organisation, too, remained the same as before.
    What does this indicate? The same employees, who cribbed about 'work-life' balance and work overload, now completed the same work that they took six days to finish, in five days. How could they, unless, earlier, they were wasting their time and not using it effectively, when they worked for six days? Alternately, if they could finish all their work in five days, why should they need to complain of excessive work when they were working for six days?
    There was only one difference. Everyone started managing their time productively when they had to finish their work in five days. In the six-day scenario, work expanded to fill in the available time.
    Managing time effectively can have a dramatic impact on your professional, social and personal lives.