Time management is a wide skill set that can be further divided into a spectrum of smaller skills that combine to boost productivity. It is inclusive of planning, organizing, time tracking, and self-identification skills. An individual must incorporate these skills into his personality to improve productivity and be able to compete better. It is an undeniable fact that a person who knows how to manage his productivity and time better proves to be more competitive than others in the prevailing cutthroat scenarios. Hence, people need to understate what skills constitute time management so that their approach towards it is comprehensive.

Time management is a conscious effort to spend a specific amount of time to perform a task with efficiency. Furthermore, productivity is the key focus here. The more productive the work, the better are the results. Moreover, time management requires a careful balancing between professional life, social life, any other hobbies or activities. From an academic perspective, time management is a necessity. Students have many subjects to cover, therefore, efficiently managing time is an important skill.

If you’re already overwhelmed, learning to manage your time may seem like something you simply don’t have time to do. It’s a bit like a big and overwhelming task you might be interested, but you’re not sure what to do first.

This article will help you step by step through beginning your journey to manage time.

THE BEST TIPS FOR ACHIEVING EFFECTIVE TIME MANAGEMENT

Planning:

Planning is a vital skill, and when people start planning and organizing their tasks in a nice manner, they save time. As a part of planning, individuals can divide their tasks into smaller packets and approach them with higher efficiency through shorter spans. To illustrate, if a student has the goal of completing 6 assignments, the student can divide this goal into 6 smaller goals of one assignment each and divide his time accordingly in a planned manner. The student can divide his time in a manner in which he completes one assignment in one session and then takes a small break before beginning the next one. This way he can complete all the assignments to the best of his efficiency and much before the deadline. Such an approach can enable the student to complete the assignments with better efficacy than completing all of them at once

Prioritize:

Once you are determined on the goals you want to achieve, you need to prioritize the activities required by the goal. This will help you determine what particular task needs to be accomplished first and what tasks can be set aside in the mean time. To achieve your priorities more efficiently, try to mark deadlines in your calendar. Make a time management schedule to set priorities straight and avoid being stressed out of trying to accomplish everything at once.

Create a simple “To Do” list:

It is good to sit and plan your tasks of the day and the amount time that you would like to devote to each task. Make a daily/weekly planner. Similarly a long term planner in the form of monthly chart can be made so that you can plan ahead. It will also serve as a reminder to constructively plan time for yourself.

Decision Making:

This skill is a prerequisite for managing life as well as time. How good an individual is at decision making or how quickly an individual is at making important decisions defines the time management capabilities of a person. Further, prudent decision-making is a skill in itself, and this skill further impacts time management abilities. To illustrate, if an entrepreneur has different tasks lined up in the day, he needs to quickly decide the priority of these tasks so that he can have a well-planned schedule to save his time and boost productivity for more important tasks.

Multitasking:

It is an obvious fact that those who can complete multiple tasks simultaneously have better time management skills. However, different people have different abilities and some are blessed with the ability to work on multiple tasks simultaneously which saves time. Hence, multitasking is also a subset of the various skills that go into time management. But not everyone is comfortable with multitasking and some may even make a lot of errors in each task while trying to complete multiple tasks at once. Therefore, an individual must only undertake to multitask if it falls in his comfort zone and his productivity is not affected by it. Others can simply go for one task at a time and do each task with diligence and productivity.

Avoid excessive relaxation:

This is applicable on sleep as well on relaxation. A sleep of six hours is enough to charge up your fatigued body. Similarly, if relaxing for fifteen minutes is equivalent to relaxation of one hour why to waste time. Killing time by sitting idle while anticipation to do something constructive is the worst thing to do. Instead use this time to exercise and stretch your body to get into rhythm of action.

Abstain from social media:

Students generally waste a lot of precious time while using social media and witness falling productivity. To have their complete focus on all tasks and preparations, the students must either delete all their social media accounts or log out of all social media platforms while studying.

Time management is one such skill which each and every highly talented assignment expert tends to follow. This skill teaches students about the different ways in which one can manage all the tasks which one needs to finish within a day in an effective, productive, and efficient manner. There are certain tips which one can follow to build this skill. And some of those tips are having a to-do list, making a time audit, and starting with realistic goals. If you are you a company manager, time management is one tool to success. Those who cannot manage their time are also poor managers of their lives. Time management will allow you to eliminate wastage, be prepared for meetings, refuse excessive workloads, monitor project progress, allocate resource (time) appropriate to a task’s importance, ensure that long term projects are not neglected, plan each day efficiently, plan each week effectively.

Similarly, it is important to give time management training to your employees. When your employees manage their time wisely and efficiently you will see increase both in production and profits. Wasting time lowers productivity, decreases profits, and fails a business.

Published in The Daily National Courier, January, 19 2023

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