TIME MANAGEMENT
Introduction
Charles Darwin said and I quote “A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life”. Time is life, Time is a resource and everything revolves around time. Attempt to overlook the significant of time is more dangerous than volcanic eruption.
Many people are in a state of despair because they fail to understand Time! Understanding of time and how to manage it is the key to live a fulfilled life.
Time keeps track of every change that occurs in our environment and universe as a whole, for instance there is a time to sleep, a time to wake, to eat and so on. Failure to know what not to do at the right time is misplaced of priorities and when priorities is misplaced life becomes hell. Since we are in time, time becomes our greatest guidance into productivity therefore managing it is our top most priority.
Time management is the technique that unlocks creativity and productivity in everyday life, through the process of planning and exercising conscious control over time. Everyday has resources to explore therefore professionalism to manage time efficiently and effectively is the key to explore and exploit these resources.
Benefits of Time Management
Achieving your goals
Everyone has goals to meet but fail to attain them due to lack of time. However effective time management helps to achieve goals and desires within time frame.
To set-up priorities
Everyday has are tasks to accomplish - time management helps to prioritise these tasks in an effective and efficient manner from the most important to the least important.
Less waste of time
Time management creates choice consciousness, which in turn help an individual to spend more time on what is important rather than spending it on frivolities.
It makes you productive
Effective time management enhances productivity in every area of your life. Time management enhances the ability to do the right thing at the right time hence, increase productivity and creativity.
It reduces stress
Gaining mastery over tasks to accomplish and the ones to set aside reduces stress.
Stay Focus
Staying focus on task requires strong discipline and determination - which can only be made available by effective and efficient management of time.
New opportunities
Time management makes you complete tasks in an effective and efficient manner, sequel to this, it incites increase in your reputation among co-workers or employer because of your reliability and productivity-driven personality therefore augments your chances of securing new opportunities.
It minimise procrastination
Everyone is guilty of procrastination but it can be minimize through effective and efficient management of time.
Less mistakes
Knowing what to do at the right time and focusing on it, result into less or no mistakes because you won’t have to engage in multi-tasking. Focusing on one thing at a time also help to stay calm. Deepak Chopra comments - “When you focus on just one thing at a time, without rushing or procrastinating, you cultivate a sense of timeless awareness that creates feelings of calm and well-being”.
Downtime
Effective and efficient time management offers time of refreshing – enough rest, participation in after work activities like visiting the cinemas, hanging out, etcetera.
Role of planning in Time Management
Planning is important in managing time effectively and efficiently. Role of planning in time management cannot be overemphasized - it encompasses all techniques to help an individual or organisation attain productivity consequently her goals. These techniques include:
Organisation
Organisation is the bed rock to effective planning of time. Organisation involves developing your goals into do-able tasks in order for easy execution. Organizing tasks in an effective and efficient manner help to avoid procrastination or unnecessary shifting of tasks.
To - do List
It is imperative to write out things you wish to accomplish on a particular day so to think clearly, save energy and avoid stress. This should not take more than 5-10 minutes of your day if possible write it out the night before. Time spent on writing out the to-do-list is never a waste of time, just as Abraham Lincoln rightly said “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe”. When writing the list it is important to break complex task into smaller pieces of do able tasks to avoid complications in accomplishing the task. As you complete each task, cross it off from the list if satisfy with the result. You can make use of your computer, paper and pen to write out your tasks or make use of to-do-list systems such as:
Evernote: https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2015/04/28/how-to-manage-tasks-with-evernote/
Any.Do: http://www.any.do
Google Keep: https://keep.google.com/u/0/
Prioritisation
After writing out your to-do-list it is important to prioritise them. Prioritisation is the mechanism to rank tasks in order of importance. Prioritisation of tasks is necessary to manage time effectively because it can be frustrating after doing so many things just to discover they are not significant.
Prioritisation of tasks can be accomplished through these principles:
• Eisenhower Decision principle
• Pareto Principle
Eisenhower Decision Principle: It prioritises tasks into important/not important and urgent/not urgent. This determines which task demand attention, delegation or ignore.
Urgent and Important: These are tasks that are observed to need urgency with great importance.
Important not Urgent: This is second in the order because the more you are dealing with important things before they become urgent, the fewer ‘urgent and important’ tasks you will have to deal with. The most obvious way to do this is to work on your own projects first every day, even if it’s only for half an hour. Whatever interruptions come along later, you will at least have the satisfaction of having made some progress towards your own goals.
Urgent but not Important: these are tasks that needs urgency but not important and tasks that fall into this category can be delegated.
Not urgent and not important: these are tasks without urgency and of no importance. Tasks that fall into this category should be turn to when success have been met over the other three categories of task prioritisation.
Figure 1.0: Eisenhower principle
Pareto Principle
Pareto principle is a mechanism that allows accomplishing 80% of tasks within available time of 20% which also implies that 80% of the remaining time will be expends to accomplish the remaining 20% tasks. It means the contribution of tasks to achieve an expected result of 80% of the overall target.
Pareto principle can be applied by ranking your tasks according to their result, if a task does not contribute to the whole targeted result it is ranked as not-important. After ranking the tasks according to their result then determine the 20% top position of tasks that can amount to 80% of your total result expected.
The Pareto principle enables you to determine the top 20% of your tasks that amount to 80% of your overall expected results and the remaining 80% that are secondary to the most important which can be accomplished after the 20% have been accomplished. However it is limited in its use when an important task to be accomplished fails to fall into the top 20% of the available time.
Design a Schedule
Established To do list and Prioritisation of tasks is the key to schedule your tasks within time frame. Scheduling involve allocation of time to each category of prioritisation, starting from the “urgent and important” to “not urgent and not important”, as you allot time to each category make consideration for contingencies, you can achieve this by ensuring you finish each task few minutes behind schedule, by so doing you make room for unforeseen occurrence
Scheduling within creative time
To be productive one must know and utilize is creative time to the fullest. Creative time is a time you experience boost of energy, a greater mental clarity and focus. For most people, is in the morning and some in the mid-night, discover yours. Schedule your most challenging tasks to be within your creative time and mind you, creative time is not a time to engage in mundane tasks but a time to be productive.
Delegation
Delegation is highly imperative especially if you are a manager or a boss of a company you can’t do it all by yourself. Learn to delegate, it will save you time and energy. If you discover a particular task is overwhelming and can be done by someone else delegate to a person fit to do it.
Managing E-mails and phone calls
Responding to every e-mail notification and receiving every call is a time waster, not every email need instantaneous reply and not all calls is worthy of receiving therefore it would be nice to let your phone go to voice mail.
Take your time to respond to “yesterday” emails only: once you have removed out all the spam, you can select 30 important e-mails, move them into a folder marked action then reply in your proper state of mind. Stay away from the pit to want to reply “today’s” email because it can interrupt you, however you can check your e-mail for that day especially if you are waiting for something important but it is not compulsory you respond to it that day.