86,400.  Interesting number but what's its relevance to you?  Well, as we approach the end of another year and decade it seems to become even more meaningful to many people.  On the other hand, to achieve at your highest level in life the number has to be more consistently relevant throughout each year.  Why?  Because the number represents the number of seconds in each of your days in this life.  You can't stop those seconds.  You can't put them in a bank and save them.  You have to have the knowledge and skills as to how to use them most wisely, now.

At 12:00 a.m., January 1, 2010, the only thing that turns back, so to speak, is the calendar to the first day of the year and the new decade.  While everything starts over at 1/1/10, everything else concerning time continues its inexorable march forward.  What will you have done to close out the year and the decade from a time management perspective, as well as begin the process of organizing yourself to manage those daily 86,400 seconds even more effectively and efficiently in 2010 and beyond?

May I suggest the first step to a more productive use of your time would be the establishing of clear goals in each of three critical areas:  Spiritual, Personal and Professional.   Each goal you establish has to be very specific as to what achieving the goal will look like.  You have to create a goal that you can measure so that you know how you are progressing toward it throughout the year.  Furthermore, each goal should be something you can realistically achieve, yet also allow for you to stretch a little beyond what you have ever achieved before.  Probably most importantly each goal has to be relevant to you in a deeply emotional way.  Finally, each goal must have a specific target date by which time you will have achieved it.

Having clearly defined your goals, you must then allocate the time to work toward each.  You should segment the steps to each goal into bite-sized pieces of time which allows you to incrementally work to the accomplishment of each goal.  Each bite-sized piece of time has allocated to it the "To Do's" necessary to successfully complete each step. 

Simple, huh?  But...hard, to be sure, because the above outlined process requires a passionate commitment to discipline yourself to follow your plan. 

Time talks to you everyday and whispers, "I'm fleeting!"  That's if you aren't exercising your ability to discipline yourself in time's use.  On the other hand, were you to be more disciplined and follow the outlined process time's talk to you would be, "I'm moving inexorably forward with you while your goals and dreams are being manifested."  The former example of time talk is disconcerting and unsettling because you feel time and all that it offers you slipping away.  The latter example of time talk creates a sense of control and piece of mind.  How would you prefer time to talk to you in the future?