I have an official meeting that will end by 1700 hrs and an MBA tutorial session starting by 1800hrs with an assignment to be submitted by 1200 hrs the following day.
Oh, I forgot to mention that I will need to sleep for at least 6 hours with provision for time to eat, check up on families and attend to personal issues!
Oh boy! Welcome to the world of Executive Master of Business Administration (EMBA) lifestyle.
Getting the much-anticipated news from Lagos Business School (LBS) Admissions Office contacted me on 10th February 2023 with an admission offer to be part of the EMBA program for cohort 28 (EMBA28), I was extremely happy to have finally achieved an aspiration of many years.
Fast forward to Friday 11th February 2023, 1500hrs when I joined my first online class and reality dawned on me. How do I combine all my commitments together with the new time demand of a rigorous MBA program from top business graduates in the world?
What are the options available; stop the EMBA program even at first lecture or stop workplace activities or neglect my responsibilities to family, friends, and others?
For sure, none is an option. So, I must find a balance, and a balance I must find. Engaging people and reading available articles on managing time, I realized that just “as marketing strategies are guided by the four Ps: Product, Price, Place and Promotion; time management answers to four ‘W’s: What, When, How and Who”[1].
Taking a hint from the passage quoted above, I set out to list my daily activities both routine and potential one-off in order of importance. Assigning resources – most importantly time – helped in removing some items off the list because I do not have 24-hours per day!
Getting to who is or will be impacted by each listed activity showed that indeed there is a problem. Most of my daily activity affected other people rather than myself – I support people (both at work and home) with more hours in a day than myself and now, I need to make a change.
Therefore, I started to re-write the activity list again using a combination of factors – Who and How.
Even though some activities are important, if I am not the first beneficiary or the time required will affect my schedule to study for classes, then it is going to be off my list and other strategies like delegation or outsourcing will be explored. Using this combo strategy, many activities still find themselves on my list as I strive to achieve a win-win situation for everyone.
First week of study at LBS with practically everyday events like tutorial, catch up sessions and weekly mandatory long hours classes, I have come to realize that my time management strategy discussed above is as good as the amount of distraction I permitted in my daily life. Of course, the distraction agents are on the prowl; social media, news, election campaign jingles, naira, and fuel scarcity issues, etc.
In fact, it took 2-days to complete this write-up – Distractions at work!
Your musing penholder,
Lukmania!
I hate GMAT!