ABSTRACT Time Management is a resource that is very valuable to virtually everyone. It is a difficult task to figure out how to manage your time and avoid distractions. What things can you do to better manage your time? What task should you take on first and what other tools help you to better manage your time? Time management is an essential management tool to have in order to be able to make it in today’s world.
Managing your time is something one must be able to do in order to have a job, to organize things with your family or household, and to even plan leisure time. Often times people wish for more time in a day to accomplish things they set out to accomplish. The truth however, is that these people could use their time better and accomplish their goals if they would simply reprioritize the time they have got (Gitomer, 2001). Something’s you can always tell about someone who has bad time management are, last minute rushes to meet dead-lines, meeting which accomplish nothing, days that seem to be non-productive, and many things which seem to come about unexpected causing a crisis for them (Blair, 2001). Poor time management can cause problems in your work and/or your household, thus causing poor work. If you are unable to manage your time efficiently, you will often times find yourself rushing to get things done and thing look back realizing that your work in very sloppy.
That is because poor time management can cause poor, rushed, and sloppy work. Good time management however can help you achieve your goals and possibly achieve them quicker. You can save time by not trying to take on everything at once (learning to say no) and by asking for help when help is needed (25 Ways, 2001). Being able to say no is very important in time management because it helps you to focus one the task in front of you and not have too many task that you become distracted by the other tasks.
It is important to decide what you can accomplish and say no to the rest until a later time. Controlling these time wasters can help you have better time management and accomplish more throughout the day. Many ways have been suggested in how to manage your time, however, there is no single correct way. Planning your day and scheduling task can greatly help manage your time. If the day starts and you have no goals set or objectives to accomplish, your day will probably give the same results, as you set, virtually nothing.
Plans will guide through the day’s distractions and keep you in course. The next step is to schedule the day’s tasks and objectives in a planner (25 Ways, 2001). This will also help keep you on task and also show a commitment to it. Without a plan or schedule you run a risk of accomplishing your goals to slowly, haphazardly, or not at all.
Effective planning is the one of the main steps in becoming organized and becoming more efficient with your time management. Your plan must have a list of goals which you wish to achieve, fore specific goals are more likely to be met. You should be careful however, in making sure that your goals are realistic and able to be reworked if the unexpected does happen (H.T.
S.P. Y.L., 2000).
By expecting the unexpected and building a flexible plan, you will have a better chance of reaching all the goals you have set for yourself. Another thing to organize in your plan is time to prepare for any meetings and projects at least a day before (Seidler, 2001). This will help you to stay organized for the any upcoming work, knowing what it is you have to do and how you are going to go about do it. Once a plan has been established, you should then prioritize your goals. The goals should be prioritized from most important to least important, not from hardest to easiest.
Objectives, which you may not want to do, may not be the most important or urgent and thus should not be attended to first. You should be careful not to put to many things on your priority list so that you do not set yourself up for failure (Seidler, 2001). This is where learning to say no to certain task is vitally important, so that you can accomplish all you set out to. In order to make use of your time it is important to figure out how much time you spend doing certain tasks throughout the day.
It is important to remember that time is however, a concept, not an object, function or event, Performance Resources tells us. Performance Resources also tell us, “that time is a way of referring to a set of experiences humans share in such a way that we can agree on the parameters of those experiences (Performance Resources).” Also since time is not an object, it is virtually impossible to manage, and that time management is instead personal management of yourself and the tasks you take on. So in order to manage the time you use, you must manage yourself and how you are using your time. This can be accomplished by keeping a record of your time.
From this record you can figure out how you are using your time and if you are using it in the best way possible. One method for a time record is to break your time up into four times frames. The first being shared time which is time your spend with your family. Next is private time, which is time you spend by yourself doing whatever, getting thoughts strait or just relaxing. The third is work time, time you spend at work or doing work related tasks. Last is project time, which is not work projects but instead things like sports and hobbies (H.
T.T.P. Y.
L., 2000). You can thing look and see if you are spending too much time doing something in one time frame and not enough in another, which allows you to make better use of your time. This helps you to maintain good quality at your work without losing time with your family, or becoming unhealthy. Once you have figured out how to use your time best, you can then make an effective schedule. After you get use to your schedule you can make it a habit, and once it is a habit you will be able to avoid procrastination, and time wasters.
All people tend to work better at certain times in the day, whether it is morning, noon, or afternoon. This is the time in which your should schedule your most important goals. You must however, realize that unexpected things can come up and thus you must make your schedule flexible enough to change without falling behind in the goals you have set. At the end of everyday be sure to give time in your schedule to evaluate how your time plan is working. By doing this you will be able to monitor your skills and use of time, thus improving your time management greatly.
All the things which I have talked about will greatly help you manage your time more efficiently, however if you do not follow through on doing the things you have set out to do, you will never have success in managing your time or much else. People often times put doing things off. This is done for many reasons, they are afraid of failure, do not have to skills to do the task, or are simply are unorganized. Once you have put one thing off one your schedule it is very easy to put other things off, until there is no point in having a schedule at all. Procrastination is time management’s worst enemy and time management is procrastination’s worst enemy. The decision one which one you are going to choose is up to you as an individual.
If you do choose to not procrastinate, and follow the steps toward better time management you should be able to accomplish more of your goals and have time left over for yourself and/or your family. REFERENCE PAGE Blair, Gerard, M. (2001). Personal Time Management for Busy Managers. Retrieved February 6, 2001, from the World Wide Web: http://www.
ee.ed.ac.uk/~gerard/Management/art2.
html Gitomer, Jeffrey. (2001). Time management in one word: reprioritize. Business First, The Weekly Business Newspaper of Greater Louisville. Retrieved February 6, 2001, from the World Wide Web: http://louisville.bcentral.
com/louisville/stories/1997/02/10/smallb3.html Seidler, Cyndi. (2001). Time Management.
Organized Living.co. Retrieved February 6, 2001, from the World Wide Web: http://www.organized-living.com/articles/timemgmt.
html Time Management Memo: Putting Out Fires. (2001). From the article collection of the Performance Resources. Retrieved February 6, 2001, from the World Wide Web: http://www.superperformance.com/timemgt.
html 25 Ways To Save Time. (2001). E Thailand.com. Retrieved February 6, 2001, from the World Wide Web: http://www.
ethailand.com/BUSINESS/Management/Time_Management/2.. Word Count: 1480
