Posts Tagged ‘time management’

Time Management – The Basics

Monday, December 8th, 2008

Time management can be interpreted in several ways. But it is commonly understood as proper allocation of time in terms of maximizing it by accomplishing more tasks. It could be applied to a lot of situations, whether in school, or work, and basically everywhere that requires something to get done within a certain period of time.

Time Management In Focus

With a lot of things to do in a span of 24 hours, most people have a difficult time setting their priorities and recognizing what are the things that must be done first. There are a lot of distractions in life that can take our attention away from far more important things. Eventually, most of us fail to maximize our use of time that we end up accomplishing nothing for the day. Hence, the big question is: how do you manage your time?

Time management works very much like economics. It is an allocation of scarce resources, which in this case is time, in order to reap maximum efficiency at the end of the day. However, we don’t need to become good economists in order to efficiently manage our time. All we need is common sense and good sense of judgment in order to maximize everything we do.

Few Things To Consider To Proper Time Management

In order to properly manage your time, there are a few things that you have to consider. You have to condition yourself to do the most important or most urgent tasks first. This is what sets responsible people apart from those who aren’t. Knowing what things to prioritize first will help you to overcome all those distractions along the way.

However, recognizing your priorities is just mainly your first step. As the cliché goes, it is easier said than done. It is best recommended to list down the things you have to do for the day. When you already have the checklist or to-do list for the day, you have to create a mindset wherein you must fulfill them. Once you are used to this list, soon you will get used to this that you do not even have to keep listing them. Instead, you’d create a mental note for what you are set to do for the rest of the day.

By doing this, you are not only able to set your priorities but develops a sense of responsibility that will prove helpful in the long run.

Knowing what your priorities are is just the first step. Relaxation is also an important factor in our everyday activities. The best thing to do is to initiate periodic rest times ideally 10 minutes every 2 hours in order to relax our mind and muscles from the stressful. Relaxing once in a while also improves our concentration in what we are doing. Hence, it improves your level of productivity.

Advantages Of Time Management

There are a lot of advantages when we properly manage our time but we will just discuss a few and most important ones.

It eliminates cramming – When you have properly set your priorities, you are able to finish your task early. This cuts time and you’d be more likely to accomplish things in advance. Hence, you avoid cramming. When you do your work earlier than usual it also follows you to achieve better results because you could allocate more time to focus on your task.

Eliminates stress – When you keep on beating deadlines, there is the tendency to use up more time. When this happens, you disrupt your sleeping habits and thus produce more stress. Proper Time management helps you eliminate the stress because you properly allocate your time for work and rest.

Proper allocation of your time is a hard task, but once you get used to it, you are sure to become more productive.

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Time Management Strategies

Saturday, December 6th, 2008

Every one of us only have 24 hours in a day to work with. Hence, time management strategies allow you to accomplish more within a few hours, instead of having to extend your work on a single task for days. Here are a few strategies that you can apply to achieve that:

List Down Your Activities

It need not be overemphasized that you have to learn how to prioritize your work. Meaning, you must set aside the less important tasks so you can focus on the more urgent ones. When you learn how to do this effectively, you can easily accomplish whatever it is you need to do within a shorter time. Make it a habit to write down a list of things to do. If you want to be really specific, break down all that you have to do within a day and in the order that you want them to get done.

As you list down your set of tasks to do, you have to identify which ones are long or short-term projects. Hence, you will be able to determine how much time you can allot for them within a day. A short-term task might be accomplished within, say a couple of hours. Meanwhile, for long-term tasks, you can try allotting 1 or 2 hours each day until when you intend to finish them. Hence, breaking down tasks would make it more efficient for you as you won’t find it too strenuous.

Allocating Time

Once you have your list, you now have to decide on how much time to allocate for each task or project you have set out to do for the day. Some tasks eat up a lot of time, so you have to be aware which are those. So as not to end up wasting so much time on one task, you have to provide time limits on each task so you can easily move on to the next.

When you do tasks in smaller chunks, it becomes a lot easier for you. Hence, you have eased yourself of the pressure. Instead, you can just focus on what you need to finish.

Know What You Want To Accomplish

Your ‘to-do’ list will serve as source of information for what your daily goals are. Hence, you can consult it to know what you have to do once you’re through with one task.

There are a few questions that you can ask yourself: How much time are you willing to render for doing leisure activities? Are you willing to cut on the leisure time and appropriate more of them into your work so it can be more productive? Once you know what your goals are, you can use that as a motivation in order to finish the list that you have made.

Don’t Make Your List Of Actions Too Long

When making your list, productivity is always on top of your mind. However, you should not try to make your list too long. Most people have this tendency but that is a common misconception. Doing more work at one time is not always equal to being productive.

Start off with a short list of the most important things you have to accomplish. That way, you can easily prioritize them. When you have already completed those on top of the list, you can always add a new set of activities.

When you try to put too many activities on your list, it may become too overwhelming for you. You could easily end up having to do several unfinished tasks at once. But that is not advisable. If you can or if it is within the time limits you have indicated for a certain task, try to complete it first before moving on to work on another one.

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Time Management Activities

Friday, December 5th, 2008

Time management can be done by just about anyone. Most people would like to believe they have full control of their time. However, most of the time they are consumed by trying to fit in every priority into what little time they have. There will always be deadlines, whether it is imposed by events such as a flight schedule that would leave at a certain time, or by other people like your boss that asks you to do a project and he needs it by the end of the week.

How can you effectively manage your time when you only have control of a meager percentage of your time? There are techniques that you can do to provide solution to this daunting question.

Note Where You Spend Your Time

Try to have a log book or a ‘To-do’ list where you can note down what you are doing and what else needs to be done. This will better help you manage your time, so you don’t end up repeating tasks. Sometimes it would take longer for you to do this but this exercise will help you start off in managing your own time by highlighting where you are spending most of your time. Hence, you will be able to evaluate what you do and decide whether or not you need to change your time emphasis.

Applying The 80/20 Rule

The 80/20 rule simply means that 80% of the results would come from the 20% of the time and effort that you use. Analyze and work on what you can do best that can guarantee the best results for your effort. Then, spend time doing that rather than doing some activities that are unproductive and can lead to delay on your work.

Leaving Things Unfinished

This may sound like it’s the opposite of time management but there are lots of things that can come across our paths that can be safely ignored and undone. Therefore, you can postpone them some other time. An example would be checking your e-mails whether or not it will arrive at your recipient or not. If it is really urgent, then you can ask for someone’s help to take your place so you can make sure you still accomplish whatever needs to get done.

Skipping The News

The daily news on the television will continue to happen whether you watch it for 30 minutes a day or not. You will find out that cutting out watching the news on the television has a good side effect of automatically cutting out lots of negativity in your life. This is like killing two birds with one stone as you also gain 30 more minutes to do your work.

Learn To Say No

Perhaps one of the most effective time management techniques is practicing to say no to less important tasks and events. When you can say no, you gain an assertion technique that can and should be developed. When you can do this, you can finish the more important tasks earlier rather than putting them off at a later time. You will also avoid cramming just to get everything done on time.

Hiring The Services Of Others

When you really need help to finish all the things you need to be done, you can always hire some help. For instance, you can hire cleaners for your home, or a gardener to look and keep your garden clean while you do your work. Entrust these less important tasks to the people you hired.

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Time Management Skills And The Brain

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008

As we live in a high paced world, there are lots of busy people nowadays. In fact, some of them are multi-tasking, or holding two jobs at once. But no matter how busy a person may be, there are simple strategies to employ so you can gain the time you need. Creating an proficient time management technique is challenging but rewarding in the end. Some suggestions you could ponder on to get you into the right direction of managing your time effectively are:

Improve Your Computer Literacy

In a world driven by technology, why not use it to improve your own time management skills? There are time management softwares that can help cut down on your energy and help organize your specific tasks and activities.

It is also advisable to learn some program shortcuts to dramatically save time such as when you are making a report or presentation. For example, you can use some keyboard hotkeys that you remember in order to make the report or presentation faster. It is much more efficient as opposed to reaching for the mouse and then looking for the icon to click on. There are various online beginner tutorials or workshops that can teach you these things within your desired areas of concern.

Improve Your Creativity

Improve your creativity. This will allow you to build and develop more ingenious and creative ideas on how you can save time doing your work. Hence, a person becomes more productive and efficient throughout the day.

Improve Problem Solving And Critical Thinking Aspects

When you improve your problem solving ability as well as critical thinking, you can spend less time on the thinking process. Instead of wasting your time to process your thoughts, you can use that to focus on finishing your task.

Improve Delegation Skills

Learning and improving ways to delegate your work can also help you achieve good time management skills. It is good to have another pair of hands to help you with your tasks and projects. This will dramatically reduce the time you spend on doing your tasks. Once you learn how to properly delegate tasks, you can save time that you can use to focus on other pressing matters.

Improve Your Emotional Intelligence

When you tend to become emotional with your work, you lessen your productivity. You lose your focus and even if you did complete your tasks, it is not of the quality you desire. Emotional intelligence encompasses the process of taking control of your emotions. Emotions can easily get in the way of your performance; so the lesser emotional distractions you can get, the better your performance at work is.

Improve Your Multi-Tasking Abilities

By improving your multi-tasking abilities, you will be able to complete tasks in a shorter period of time. You can work with other people to further improve and develop your multi-tasking ability. You have to remember though that when you are doing tasks that require much attention and focus, it is best to avoid multi-tasking since you’re at a risk of causing errors or mistakes.

Taking Regular Breaks

Other than working many hours a day in a straightforward manner, always remember to take breaks in between tasks. This will avoid too much stress exerted on your body. You might notice that by the end of the day, you feel overly fatigued. When you take regular breaks, you refresh your body and mind. Hence, you are able to process more information and be more productive.

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Time Management – Why Bother?

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008

Time management is a common problem faced by most of us. Oftentimes, when you are swarmed with multiple tasks at once, it becomes extremely difficult to identify which ones you must complete first. Too often, people eat up what is supposed to be their free time to be able to accomplish all pending tasks in time.

It takes a considerate amount of skill in order to manage your time properly. If you are one of these people, you are usually able to control your time efficiently that you can even finish tasks ahead of time.

Let’s try to analyze the importance of Time management in different fields.

Time Management in School

Due to more freedom merited to college students, it can become quite challenging for new (freshman) students to cope with time management. The liberty to choose your own schedule readily creates a false notion that they can do whatever the want. On the other hand, it reflects one’s priorities and how you are able to properly appropriate them into your schedule.

With lack of proper time management, a student will have trouble coping up with deadlines set by professors. Most students would tend to slack off during vacant hours that they end up accomplishing nothing.

If a student has prepared his or her own list of work for the day, he or she will be able to properly allocate the time spent for extra curricular activities and assignments.

Time Management at work

When it comes to your job, proper usage of your time is more particular. This is because you are paid for the hours of service you render to the firm. Hence, companies will try to ensure that each hour you spend at the office is utilized effectively for work. Despite of this, employees still seek out ways to have a break.

If time is not properly managed, employees could easily eat up more time for their -breaks- than what is actually spend on actual work. Hence, the company ends up requiring the employee to do overtime work just to finish a project. If the overtime rendered is reflected on your paycheck, then good for you. But if not, then you reap the unpleasant effects of poor time management.

The Essence of Time Management

With the varying scenarios presented, it all comes down to one thing – proper time management. It allows you to achieve more in less time as compared to doing things without following a suitable system.

By properly allocating your time, you will be able to finish your tasks much faster. Also, you are able to avoid overlapping tasks that tend to slow you down.

How is efficiency linked to proper time management? Listing your intended work for the day is more than just there for reminder. Instead, they also remind you in terms of importance and urgency. When you make a list, it is important that you also create a time table for each corresponding task. This way, you are compelled to follow them in the time frame that was indicated to increase efficiency.

Aside from becoming more efficient, you also become more responsible when you learn how to properly manage your time. You can not only set your priorities, but also provide equal time for both work and leisure. Being responsible with your time will work effectively whether in school or work.

Probably the biggest benefit you can get from proper time management is that it improves the quality of your work. When you have ample time to work on a certain task, you will have enough time to determine any mistake and have enough time to correct or improve on it. When you are cramming, you do not have this luxury of revision and hence mostly settle for what you can accomplish under the allowed time frame.

To those who fail to manage their time well, most of them work under pressure or hours before the deadline. Hence, they do not get the chance to check the quality of their work.

These are just a few of the practical reasons why Time Management must be practiced by anyone who wants to become more effective in their field.

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