Time management: A new approach from ancient Greece!
Learn how to create a balance in your time and work by applying the theory of the Four Elements — earth, fire, air and water — to the way you manage your time.
Here is a model of time management that, although highly original and innovative, is based on a theory that is several thousand years old. The theory is the theory of the Four Elements. According to the ancient Greeks, all matter in the universe was comprised of just four elements: earth, fire, air and water. These four elements are not just real. They’re also symbolic. And they represent the four key elements of time management. When you hold these four elements in balance through the tasks you perform, you bring to your life a rich, varied and harmonious pattern. Let’s see exactly how.
1. Earth Tasks. The Earth element represents the source from which we obtain our nourishment. It is the basis on which everything else is built. It is the rock, the core, the groundwork. Earth tasks are those tasks in our life that have to be done if we are to survive. They include sleeping, eating, and bodily needs. In an organizational context, they are the routines, systems, and rituals around which work is organized. As such, Earth tasks are essential, if sometimes dull.
Spend up to a quarter of your day on Earth tasks. Do them when you want a break from thinking, creating, and relating tasks.
2. Fire Tasks. The element of Fire represents the creative spark in us. When this spark is lit, it can produce something uniquely special that adds to our lives and the lives of others. Fire tasks include any inspirational, dynamic, spontaneous, and productive work, such as developing new ideas, working on projects, taking risks, trying out something new, developing ourselves and innovating. While we connect with Earth tasks through our lower bodies, we connect with Fire tasks through the heart and belly. Without Fire tasks, your life is repetitive and circular. With Fire tasks, you move ahead and fulfil the potential you were born with.
Spend up to a quarter of your day on Fire tasks. Do them when you want a break from routine, thinking, and relating tasks.
3. Air Tasks. The element of Air is associated with any activity that involves thinking. As such, it is often thought of as any non-doing activity. Air is the most elusive of all the elements. Air is everywhere and nowhere, yet it is impossible to grasp and contain. Air tasks include any pure thinking activity, such as goal-setting, planning, decision-taking, problem-solving, creative thinking, analyzing, and learning. It is also the time we need to spend in our lives for renewal and recuperation. For many people who see work as constant activity, the Air element is a reminder of the need to switch off. Without Air tasks in your life, work becomes a struggle. With them, it becomes effortless.
Spend up to a quarter of your day on Air tasks. Do them when you want a break from routine, creative, and relating tasks.
4. Water Tasks. Water is a metaphor for working with others. Like water, time with others is a connecting process. Just like our relationships, water may be still or turbulent, trickling or rushing, bubbly or calm, shallow or deep, active or passive, destructive or playful. While essential for getting things done, time with others can also be one of our biggest time robbers. We can achieve nothing without others. But if we are not careful, we can achieve nothing because of others. That’s why, like water, this aspect of time management is best when controlled and systemized.
Spend up to a quarter of your day on Water tasks. Do them when you want a break from routine, thinking, and creative tasks.
Balancing each day’s activities is not simply a sensible way to live. It is also healthy, productive and enjoyable. To follow an intense period of planning (Air work) with a physical task (Earth work), then to follow that with time on a project (Fire work), followed by time with colleagues (Water work), is to create a rich and whole texture to the day that somehow feels right. That’s why the theory of the Four Elements, as old as it is, still has so much relevance to our lives today.
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Interesting
Cheers,
Anitha
Eric,
I have noticed that performing a different type of task after finishing the current one refreshes me. An example of this is creating a plan, followed by writing a report, than a meeting with colleagues and then trying a new tool/ technique in a project. As I write this, I realize that I am probably not giving equal attention to each type of task every day. I will try to change this and see what happens.
Thanks for your post,
Inder P Singh
Hi Eric,
I liked your article. I will try to apply the 4 elements in my daily routine.
Regards,
Coty
“It’s Not About Time Management”
In Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty: The New Rules for Getting the Right Things Done in Difficult Times (McGraw-Hill), renowned management consultant Ram Charan offers executives a detailed guide to surviving the worst financial and business crisis since the Great Depression. The key, Charan says, is “management intensity”-deep immersion in the operational details of the business and the outside world, combined with hands-on involvement and follow-through.
Plans and progress must be revisited almost daily. Big-picture, strategic-level thinking cannot be abandoned, but every leader now must be involved, visible, and in daily communication with employees, customers, and suppliers. In this world, everyone needs detailed, up-to-date, and unfiltered information. And they have to act decisively when trouble looms. “If you don’t prepare for the worst,” says Charan, “you will put both your company and career at risk.”
Management Intensity and HR
HR has been pretty intensely consumed with issues related to talent management over the past decade. This has been largely as a response to economic and demographic factors. The economy has been booming (meaning a higher demand for skilled workers) and the birth rate has fallen (meaning a decreasing supply of them).
In response, many organizations have increased their focus on attraction, retention and development–to put it another way, getting the right people in the right seats and keeping them there.
Major initiatives such as career development, employee engagement and retention, workplace satisfaction, and mentoring have been widely implemented to support the achievement of talent management goals.
As I sit here in January 2009, however, recession once again dominates the business headlines, and in boardrooms across the country executives are meeting to discuss falling revenues and budget cuts.
Now comes a study from Leadership IQ, a training and research firm, which bears out the conventional wisdom. Three-quarters of layoff survivors say their productivity has declined while customer service has worsened. The survey also found that 69 percent of the remaining workers believe the quality of the company’s products or services has declined since the layoffs.
The company’s survey of 4,172 workers who kept their jobs after a layoff also found that an astonishing 64% of surviving workers say the productivity of their colleagues has also declined.
Getting the right people remains critical, but in the short term, hiring will decrease and employees will become more security-conscious and thus less eager to jump ship. There will be a renewed focus on costs, and that includes salary costs—-specifically productivity per employee (be that in terms of revenue, profit or production units).
HR to the Rescue?
Inherent in the current economic condition is an opportunity for organizations (and HR in particular) to expand their focus beyond attraction and retention to also include productivity.
Now that the new economic reality has set in, leaders have an extraordinary opportunity to add new value to the enterprise by focusing on initiatives to increase productivity and efficiency in the midst of economic downturn. In this case, that equates to what people do—and how they do it.
GTD as a Possible Solution
As the world’s leading skill set for personal and organizational productivity, one unique aspect of GTD is that it can be immediately applied to the current projects an individual is working on. For this reason, personal and organizational productivity can be immediately impacted. In our various GTD seminars, most of the work that participants work on is real world project work. This ensures that every participant departs fully enabled to immediately be more productive—both on the job and at home.
Another important aspect of GTD is its scalability. In support of a company-wide productivity initiative, GTD’s productivity behaviors can be easily scaled across even a global multinational organization. GTD is commonly mapped to an organization’s core competencies to ensure that productivity is systematically supported by the various HR systems.
Finally, a distinctive feature of GTD is the amazing residual benefit that participants experience in their personal lives. GTD offers the participant and the organization tremendous value – not only because of the improved quality of work life that often lasts for the rest of one’s career, but also because of the increase in personal satisfaction, stress-relief, and productivity that people practicing GTD experience. For organizations, this translates to more productivity in troubled times as well as more satisfied employees.
Pat Smith is the President & CEO of The David Allen Company. He has worked in the HR/OD/OE field for over twenty years, and is considered an expert in the field of organizational development, change management and leadership development. Pat can be reached at pat.smith at davidco dot com
This is good stuff. I deliver workshops on time mgmt and I like this and may incorporate some of this.
See http://www.barclaylp.com
Great article. I am a researcher and academician and sometimes had the feeling that life has become dull, boring and more of a routine. When I started on new projects (fire element), I would sometimes compromise with the routine tasks. The key is to strike a balance between the our elements.
Excellent Article.. I can only add that there are numerous things which we can learn from Mother Nature.
Timely rising & setting of SUN; Timely High & Low tides; Timely Changing of seasons.
Also, the Sun light is for all to share and so is the shade of trees, min you, both the SUN & TREE never judges & discriminates between people. Its we who tend to be judgemental and thus starts the never ending — Yours & Mine…etc.
woooooooooh, this is very interesting. thanks for this article
interesting article…. I never thought of relating earth, fire, air and water elements to the time management… but really true and inspiring… thanks for posting….
It is so true..coz if we are not in tune with the four elements of this Universe..there is no balance and thus, life lacks the meaning. Every task of the day, relates to the elements. Interesting. We are so unware of it, though. This all involvement with the elements brings harmony and peace in our lives. Phenomenal!!
Another approach to time management (focuses on how much time is wasted daily):
http://sites.google.com/site/timests/new-old-time-management-system
Simple and effective.