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Home » Don’t Manage Time, Manage Focus: Savinda Ranathunga (Transcript)

Don’t Manage Time, Manage Focus: Savinda Ranathunga (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of Savinda Ranathunga’s talk titled “Don’t Manage Time, Manage Focus” at TEDxThammasatU conference.

In this TEDx talk, Savinda Ranathunga emphasizes the importance of personal focus over time management in achieving life goals. He shares his journey of failing to meet New Year’s resolutions and how he overcame this by meticulously managing his personal finances and recognizing broader life aspirations.

Ranathunga introduces the concept of the ‘wheel of life’, advocating for a balanced approach that includes career, relationships, health, and personal growth. He illustrates the power of small, daily actions in contributing to overall happiness and success, exemplified by his morning interactions with a local vendor. Ultimately, Ranathunga encourages the audience to live every day with the purpose and excitement of January 1st, focusing on incremental progress and personal integrity.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

Wish you all a very happy New Year. You may be wondering what I am talking about. Am I living four months back? What does the first of New Year mean to you? It’s a day that we really aspire to achieve something. Make a true difference. Where you think about forgiving your mistakes, starting something new, really achieving some inspirations. Let me check. How many of you had a New Year resolution before? Okay, many of them. Keep holding, keep holding.

How many of you can confidently tell me that you have successfully achieved it? Oh, one, two, three. Thanks. Good. I will talk to you during the break.

The Challenge of New Year Resolutions

Why is that so? The research done by Scrampton University in the U.S. has revealed that 92 percent of the New Year resolutions that we make are not being successful to be achieved. It’s not only for New Year resolution. It’s normally for many of the goals that we have in our life to become a better citizen, achieve success, achieve better exam results. There are so many goals that we think and have for the future that we are not being able to achieve.

I’m no different. I have been the same. When I was younger, I had the same challenge of setting bigger ambitions, wanting to be the super idol that I always aspired to be, but not being able to reach over there.

So in 2009, January 1st, I thought, okay, I need to make a difference at least in a small way. I really, really want to achieve my goal for that year. And that year, my goal was, maybe relate to some of you as well, is on personal financial management, to make sure that I am managing my finances in the best and effective manner, because always, maybe relate to some of you, end of the month, we always run with less in cash.

But the clear difference that I did from just setting up a goal was that, let me try to understand what this challenge is all about, what I really want to achieve. I want to manage my finance, but what is it all about? I just took a piece of paper and at least started, like, pointing down what I am spending every day, and what are my source of incomes, and then how I am really managing them.

My Journey to Financial Management

So it took some time. The point was that I was keeping, recording them, looking at them. Then I started understanding, okay, there are some patterns. Okay, I’m spending too much on sometimes transportation, or sometimes in junk food, or in many other things. And because of that, I might not have the capacity to invest in the things that I wanted to.

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So within a few months, maybe a couple of years, I really started understanding which I should be really focusing on my finance, my personal finance, and what sort of sources that can really bring them to me. So with that ability, after about two years, I was able to really manage to make sure that I am self-financially sustainable, not from my parents’ money, from my own finances. But in three years, three to four years, I was able to make sure that I have enough personal money to do further education, and also invested in my own social enterprises to start up a business.

So, however, when I really dig down into achieving this goal of financial management, which I had in 2009, but sort of achieved in 2011-12, I went back. Is finance the main composition, or is it the main driver that we have in our life? Is finance standalone?

So then on 2013, near to January 1st again, I had this aha moment. Then it realized to me that finance is not just what it is, it’s not just a standalone, but it really enacts on who you are and what you want to be, what are your dreams, your visions, your missions, your aspirations that relate to how you earn money and how you spend money.

Expanding the Vision

So with that regard, I thought, okay, that means that is my stage two, that should be my step two. I should be able to set up a better management for myself in terms of what I want to achieve in the future. So with my own background, being born in a village, working with communities, I had this strong desire to empower young people achieving their development.

So with that vision, I set up my own missions, smaller targets that I have, pillars of my success. One is on education, having good education capacity and on entrepreneurship, like really building my successful enterprises, communities through that one. Last but not least, on networks, really making sure that I’m part of communities, engaging with networks and building the career that I have.

But that was only one part of my challenge. Then I discovered this concept of wheel of life, the life cycle approach, because I wanted to achieve thinking about my future rather than just having a degree or a good job or what will really make me happier, what should be my real mission in my life.