“The way we spend our time defines who we are.”
-Jonathan Estrin
Have you ever felt that there should be more than 24 hours in a day to complete everything you want to? Does it seem that there are too many tasks and too little time?
Effective time management can help you with this. Time Management is a process that enables you to decide how to delegate time to different activities and focus on what is important.
Why inculcate it into your lifestyle?
We often encounter the phrase “Time is limited”. We hear people say that “Time that is lost never comes back”. What can we do then to use time in a manner that makes us feel satisfied and content? The answer is that we can inculcate the skill of Time Management into our lives. Effective Time Management helps us prioritize, allows us to get more done in less time, do quality work, and helps us deliver the performance we have promised. It also helps us stay more focused and keeps us on track. Time Management skills become especially important when we face deadlines and examinations and help us effectively deal with everyday life tasks.
Obstacles to Time Management
Why is it that sometimes, despite our best intentions, we cannot do effective time management? There are various reasons we cannot delegate and use time effectively or why we tend to go off track. We get easily distracted due to time wasters. Interruptions like phone calls or tasks that require our immediate attention can cause disturbances to our schedule. Notifications from our phones can lead to distractions, making us spend a huge amount of time on social media without even realizing it. Having to do too many things at once can lead to stress and maybe the reason to start procrastinating. Instead of doing something when it needs to be done, we push it for later, which can cause delays. Working without breaks or time for relaxation can lead to fatigue, due to which our motivation and capacity to work deteriorates. Obstacles can be very personal, and it is important to identify them to decide on strategies that can be used to overcome them.
How to use time more effectively?
“All time management begins with planning.”
-Tom Greening
Once we have identified how we spend our time, we can use various time management strategies. Planning and prioritizing can help us effectively reduce wastage of time. A good way to manage time is to consolidate similar tasks together. When making a schedule for yourself, you can keep similar things together, like completing tasks that have to be done in the kitchen together. This way, you’ll end up saving a lot of time. It is also a good idea to do important or tougher tasks first, to get them out of the way early and save energy.
Periods of inactivity or being idle can lead to feelings of stress and guilt. Instead of feeling that this time is not being used, we can utilize it by doing something recreational to rejuvenate or complete small tasks. It is also important to say ‘no’ when you’re busy. If someone wants to talk to you when you are occupied, explain to them calmly that you are doing something important and will get back to them as soon as you are done. It is also a good idea to note down things to remember tasks that have to be done and reduce mental load. Maintaining daily logs in a journal or a notepad can facilitate this practice. Maintaining schedules or creating timetables help us plan how to use time. We can use flexible techniques like overall, weekly, and daily planning to make timetables that suit our needs.
Please share with us techniques that help you manage time effectively or which obstacles you have overcome in recent times to improve your Time Management skills.
Watch this space for an informative and effective way to create timetables!
Reading this made me realise how important it is to manage time thank you for such a beautiful and essential lesson.
Indeed, lack of planning and distractions specially from mobiles are biggest culprits in not getting the most out of the time.