Time Management Skills

If you are able to control your time, you control your life! A planned, organized day is more fruitful than one lived whimsically without any carefully considered goals. “The person who concentrates entirely on sawing wood is likely to forget to sharpen the saw”. Productive people have set their priorities and scheduled their time accordingly. Unsuccessful, unskilled worker and procrastinating students are present-oriented and unorganized, fatalistic and hedonistic. Our situation and needs influence our time orientation, but our time orientation (and needs) can be changed, leading to more success in life. Time is a precious commodity; everyone gets an equal share but we use it very differently. We also look at time very differently: 57% of us are present and future oriented; 33% are mainly future oriented; 9% are present oriented; 1% focuses on the past.


Common Problems. Lot of people waste time, lot of problem managing time! Many people have little experience organizing their lives because parents, teacher, bosses and friends have done it for them. They do not see the need for a scheduled. Many people resent any barrier that interferes with their doing whatever they feel like doing at the moment. Thus a schedule is seen as stifling by some and resisted. Some of us are pushed by pressing needs - a need for love and attention, a need to avoid responsibility and work, a need to believe that future will take care of itself (so I can do whatever I want to right now), a need to escape real life by listening to music, watching TV, or reading a novel and so on. In some cases, a new determination to schedule your timing will. Greater self-awareness/psychological help may be required for some. Many of us spend our days handling what appears to be “urgent” problem such as answering the phone or mail, meeting the deadlines for never read reports, attending meetings, etc. which in the broader sense not very important or useful. If your schedule is filled with unimportant urgencies you won’t have time: to learn new things, to do long range planning, to be creative and original, to do research, to exchange ideas with others, to rethink your major objectives, to invent new opportunities, to try to prevent future problems, to help others. These activities result in greater productivity and more benefits to everyone; they are the essence of a thoughtful life. Some people make their daily schedule too rigid and overly demanding. Your schedule should make you feel as if you have got it together, not like a failure or an incompetent. Make time an opportunity, a chance - to talk with the boss, to become involved in a project, to meet someone.

Method of Time Management. Time management is aimed at making better use of your time, both in terms of devoting time to high priority activities and avoiding wasting time or spending your time on less important things. To be time effective, by selecting the best thing to do at this moment from among the infinite possibilities. Steps of time management are as follows:

Step 1: Set your priorities. List your major goals for the next few months. Rate each goal. Ask, ‘what are the most important things for me to do?’

Step 2: List what needs to be done this week in order to reach your top priority goals. Rate each activity.

Step 3: Observe how you spend your time.

Step 4: Make a master schedule of fixed activities for the week.

Step 5: Keep a running list of assignments, things you need to get done this week.

Step 6: Make a “to be done list” every day.

Step 7: Follow your daily “to be done list”. Reward yourself.

You must be ready to explore any good opportunity; otherwise life can become a dig. Priorities and assignments and deadlines change everyone; thus the use of your “free” time everyday must change a little too. Time Management makes you more fruitful. Danger may be that you make a hard decision; might regret that you have lost that time. Advantage is that you have at least given your brain a chance to influence your life!