A Guide to Time Management

Having troubles keeping up with time? Maybe you just can’t help it, you always find yourself working against the clock and always late to events. You leave home each day thinking ‘Man, if I don’t get fired today then I’m invincible’ (and of course, you’re always proven to be mere mortal at the end of the day) It sucks to be in that situation, right? You just don’t know the best way to manage time.

Time management has to do with planning how to best divide your load of activities into the amount of time you have to execute them. It is more like, doing so much in so little time. It enables you to work smarter, not harder. You might be wondering, ‘why spend time reading a post on time management when I should actually be utilizing my time right now in performing my tasks?” but here’s a list of what the knowledge of time management will help you gain.

• Good professional Reputation
• Great productivity
• Less stress
• Spare time to achieve more goals

On the other hand, these are what you’re likely to suffer if you fail to properly manage your time well;

• Poor professional reputation
• Overdue deadlines
• Lots of stress
• Never enough time to achieve other goals

With all of that said, I guess you see the need to learn some time management tips. Find them below;

1. Set goals correctly: Use the SMART formula to set your goals. By that, I mean that each goal you set to achieve needs to be, Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely
2. Set a Time Limit: A time limit would keep you from being distracted while you’re performing your task. For example, you can set the span of 2hours for a task and work towards it and if, for a reason, you exceed the time allocated, and you would have to give up another activity, let it be one that would be to your pleasure, maybe a relaxation time. Knowledge of what you have to let go of in order to complete your task would discourage you from procrastinating
3. Plan Ahead: Not having a plan of activities for a day would only make you major on minor things. It is highly important to make this either a night before or in the morning. You could spend the last 20 minutes in the office planning your activities for the next day. Better yet, you could spend a couple of minutes in the morning to plan your activities for the rest of the day.
4. Prepare a To-Do list: First off, it is important to itemize what you have to do in a day, and it is as equally important to place the more energy draining tasks first. Here’s the reason why; people generally are more energetic in mornings. This would help you carry out your task effectively and the fulfilment you get from performing the most tedious task will motivate you to carry out other tasks. Here’s the logic; if you have only one thing to do, do it in the morning and if you have multiple, do the most difficult first
5. Fix a leisure time between each task: It might seem like you are achieving a lot when you jump from one task to another, but the truth is, the human brain is only able to concentrate for only 90 minutes at a time. So, it is quite important to create a couple of minutes for relaxation. More like recovering from the stress of performing the first task. You take a walk, daydream or snooze a bit with this time you have. This would refresh and re-energize you for more tasks ahead.
6. Learn to say ‘No’: It could be difficult at times to say no to a colleague who needs you to assist them with a project or a friend who has invited you to dinner. It’s understandable that you don’t want to hurt their feelings but to be able to sort your daily tasks effectively, you would have to say no to some of those requests until you have spare time.
7. Learn to Delegate: As much as you want your tasks to be perfectly executed and would want to do them yourself, you have to understand that there is a limit to how much you can naturally do within a given period. For that reason, you need to learn to delegate or outsource when necessary. Doing this will not only save you the stress but as well give you more time to focus on the task you are handling.