TIME MANAGEMENT
Managing your time wisely is almost as important in achieving your goals as is confidence in yourself.
Many of us would have less stressful lives and achieve much more in a shorter time if we just learnt how to manage our time.
Here is a tried and proven guide to managing your time more effectively and efficiently!
If you are always running late and missing deadlines, this indicates that you are not aware of how much time you truly need to get your tasks done or that you do not ‘know time’.
What does it mean to ‘know time’?
Understand what time means for you!
The first step in managing your time is understanding what time means for you! This means that you need to know what you can achieve in a particular period of time. For example, understand what you can get done in ten minutes. For example, maybe you can wash the dishes in ten minutes or proofread an assignment in ten minutes. That is what ten minutes means for you. Someone else may need more or less time to do these things. It is therefore important that you understand what time means for you, in other words, what can you achieve in a given block of time.
This knowledge will set the foundation for better time management.
Steps to better time management:
1. For about a week, make a note of the activities you do each day and how much time you spend on each of these activities. Record activities such as getting ready, preparing breakfast, etc.
2. Using the information you gained about how you spent the last seven days, make a schedule. For example, what is the average time you needed to get ready each morning. Allot this amount of time for the ‘getting dressed’ slot on your schedule. Do this for all your other activities.
3. Your schedule should include two types of tasks: 1. tasks which you do every day, for example commuting to work; and 2. time slots for tasks which will change each week or month, for example, cleaning the garage. These tasks you will ‘pencil in’ each week or month.
4. After a week of working from your schedule, go back to check how closely you were able to follow your new schedule. If you did not do very well in sticking to your schedule, rewrite the schedule to allot more time for those tasks you realized you needed more time for; and less time for the tasks you were able to finish before your allotted time had expired. Do this as often as you need to until you feel comfortable sticking to your schedule.
5. At the start of the week, make a list of the tasks you need to complete within that week, for example, write essay, help son with social studies project, clean garage etc.
Go to your schedule and decide on what time slots you will use to complete these tasks.