MANAGING TIME

The most precious resource anyone could ever have and which most people misuse is TIME. Knowing how to manage time can ease on other challenges like stress we face.

According to Wikipedia, Time management is the act or process of planning and exercising conscious control over the amount of time spent on specific activities, especially to increase effectiveness, efficiency or productivity.

Most time it seems we do not have enough time to do all what we need to get accomplished in a day. These days, time seems to be at a premium. We have devices that keep us constantly connected with work, with friends and family, and sometimes even with complete strangers. As a result, it's easy to get distracted; and when we allow ourselves the distraction that comes, it can lead to build up of stress later on. I have that challenge most times, but I have used the following steps/skills to tackle the challenge of managing my time.

Setting Clear Goals: Setting goals are very easy, but if they are unrealistic the chances of achieving them are zero to none. Set specific and clearly defined goals making sure they are realistic and achievable. Examine your situation and assess what goals you would need to set and actions required to see to it that you achieve your targets.

Remember to set contingency plans in place in case you have to change plans.

Breaking Goals Down to Achievable Steps: Just as was cited while we talked about procrastination in another post, we need to break down goals into their components so that they can accomplish them one step at a time.

Prioritising Tasks: This is focusing on tasks that are urgent and important rather than those which are not and which will not move us towards our goals. You may work hard but spend all your time on unimportant task, being efficient and being effective are too very different things.

To be effective you need to be able to decide what tasks are urgent and important and to focus on these. It is very important for you to have a list of your entire task and sort them on order of priority and devote more time to the most important of these. This reduces the tendency for you to concentrate on simple and easy task and allow too many interruptions to your work.

An urgent task may not be immediately important, and an important task may not be immediately urgent. Using a basic Eisenhower Method, we arrange task using important/unimportant and urgent/not urgent criteria and put them in a quadrant.

Tasks in unimportant/not urgent quadrants are dropped, tasks in important/urgent quadrants are done immediately and personally, tasks in unimportant/urgent quadrants are delegated and tasks in important/not urgent quadrants get an end date and are done personally.

Scheduling and Making List: Here we make a list to remind us of what we need to do and when we need to get it done. Don’t rely on you remembering EVERYTHING in your head; carry a pen and note pad or an organiser wherever you go. Write down everything from appointments, to deadlines, to time to make some calls, time to eat, and most importantly you should cross off each task as you accomplish.

·        Focuses your mind on important objectives.

·        You are less likely to forget to do tasks

·        Writing a list helps order your thoughts

·        It helps show the bigger picture

·        You don't need to hold everything in your head.

·        It saves time

·        It helps you decide on priorities: the most important and the most urgent

·        You are less likely to become side-tracked

·        You get the reward of ticking off your achievements

·        You feel more in control

·        You have a record of what you've done

·        You always have something to work on

Making lists, drawing up schedules, prioritising tasks is the greatest skill you can have to tackle time wasting. Knowing when you need to do a particular task will keep you in check.

Avoiding Procrastination: Procrastination is the thief of time, and what we are talking about is time management. Try to take decisions immediately. The best time to do anything is NOW, do not wait TILL LATER. When you take action, you are generating the impetus to do more within whatever frame of time you have.

Benjamin Franklin said ‘Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today’. Procrastination is the scourge of action planning. (see http://ifocuss.blogspot.com/2014/02/procrastination-breaking-habit.html)

 

Organising Time: Identify areas of your life where you are wasting time and try to reduce these. A good way to do this is to log everything you do for a week in meticulous detail and then examine your record to see how you use (or misuse!) your time.

Develop a regular work routine. Keep your work space tidy so that you can work efficiently - it's hard to do this if things you need to find are buried under a pile of paper! Work to schedule so that you meet deadlines in good time - don't leave everything until the last minute. If you have a difficult essay to write, start by drafting out the structure first- this will break the ice.

Once we have identified ways in which we can improve the management of our time, we can begin to adjust our routine and pattern of behaviour to reduce any time related stress in out lives.