Ian S. Ardern - A Time to Prepare

Time usage is always a challenge and in this talk we are reminded of the importance of proper and wise usage. I remember well when our Stake President, James King invited one of the contemporaneous teachers of time management, Charles Hobbs to present his approach and usage of the tool Daytimer to the Stake. It was so well received that later he came again for a second presentation. As in this talk, we learned to prioritize, schedule and calendar to use our time more wisely. As the years passed others stepped forward, refining the use of the tools which many Church members used. It became so endemic that in any meeting you would see us with our planners, often in place of the Scriptures. Now with computers, it is even easier for most of use to use a tool if we are around computers every day.

His talk did not focus on the tools but upon the conscious use of the precious time we are given. He gave us some general lists that might be used to evaluate the time and activities we are using each day:

Some Suggested Uses:

❑ Research Articles

❑ Conference Talks

❑ Ancestral Records

❑ Receive e-mails, Facebook Reminders, Tweets, and Texts

Some Suggested Potential Time Wasters”

❑ Electronic Games

❑ Cyber Acquaintances

❑ Distracting and Destructive Pursuits

❑ Addictive Internet Browsing

I would like to add that if you have a particular personal goal or activity it is now the greatest blessing to use computers or other electronic devices to make our tasks more efficient. You can easily find them with a little searching. Just the fact that I am using the computer right now to summarize my reading of this talk is evidence of this. I find the talks on the Church website here: https://lds.org/general-conference/2011/10/ then to make my summary before posting I am using MacJournal, an Apple program which allows me to set up various journals at one time and post to them when needed for an editable document, saved by date and tags personal to me. I will mention one more tool when you need to work on specific tasks on a computer. I use another Apple program called My Little Pomodoro to set up a timer that pushes me to complete each stage of a task before the allotted time such as 25 minutes before a break. You can find that program and its use here: http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/ . Don’t worry, this part is free.

I know that paragraph was not specifically on point as far as his talk, but inspiration sometimes intercedes. So to conclude this post here are two quotes of his that I love:

1. Time is never for sale; time is a commodity that cannot, try as you may, be bought at any store for any price. Yet when time is wisely used, its value is immeasurable. On any given day we are all allocated, without cost, the same number of minutes and hours to use, and we soon learn, as the familiar hymn so carefully teaches, “Time flies on wings of lightning; we cannot call it back”
2. With the demands made of us, we must learn to prioritize our choices to match our goals or risk being exposed to the winds of procrastination and being blown from one time-wasting activity to another. 

Thank you Elder Ardern for bringing this extraordinarily important topic to the fore.