Time Management

What is Time Management?

This can be defined in a multitude of ways. It can be defined as techniques to increase the time available to pursue activities, a cluster of behaviors that are deemed to facilitate productivity and alleviate stress, the degree to which individuals perceive their use of time to be structured and purposive or you could say that it is a vehicle to take your from where you are to where you want to go. It is life management.

Time management is about using your time efficiently. Something I suffer from and I sure some of you suffer from is being late when you had time to be early. What we fail to understand is that, the surest way to be late is to have plenty of time. During this period when we feel we have “plenty” of time, it is just time that we have not allocated to anything in particular. During this period, we tend to do anything and everything, we may end up not achieving anything. The worst of all is, we end up overshooting what we thought was free time and taking away from scheduled time. It is better to be three hours too soon (early), than a minute too late.

Time Wasters

For time wasters, there are steps that can be followed to aid us is saving our time. These are the 4-D’s of Time Management:

1. Dump it – It’s not important, it is a time waster;
2. Delegate it – It is important, but someone else can do it;
3. Defer it – It is important, but it can wait;
4. Do it – It is important, so just do it now.

Psychology of Time

These are mental things that can be done to aid us in the process of managing our time.

Self-Affirmation

It starts within you. If you believe you are efficient, organized, and capable, then you are;

With time, belief becomes a reality;

Act the Part

Act as if you are efficient and organized;

Do not be afraid of failures, mistakes or missed deadlines;

Start your day on a productive note

Make your bed when you wake up;

Give yourself the opportunity to succeed

Do not chew on more than you can swallow, keep about seven things on your to do list, not more than that;

Allow time for disruptions. To buttress, the time you allocate for a different task dose not have to be fully accounted for by the task. Account for extra time or unused time with the time for you allocated task. This is because there is uncertainty in everything that we do, so there should be time allocated in sake, of disruptions.

Celebrate small victories

Congratulate yourself on the small victories

Create balance in your life – create time for family friends, rejuvenation, etc.