In today’s scenario people are so busy in their lives that they are not getting time for themselves. Due to which time management has become the need of the hour. Time management is playing a vital role in mankind. Time management creates discipline or vice versa. If you want to be successful in life then you need to manage your time. As a result, various billionaires teach about time management.

Time management is a prestigious topic for budding subconscious minds. It is one of the most crucial skills that you must inculcate from early on. This skill has vital importance when you move into a professional setting. It is extremely important to manage time efficiently as not managing time can create many problems in your day-to-day life. Time stops for none and is equal for all. Everyone has the same 24 hours in a day but some people make better use of time than others. This is one of the most important reasons some people are experts in what they do. Therefore, time management plays a vital role in both personal as well as professional lives.

Time management is basically an effort made consciously to spend a certain amount of time performing a task efficiently. Furthermore, it is estimated that to have better results, one needs to do productive work. Thus, productivity is the key focus here. Moreover, maintaining a careful balance between professional life, social life, and any other hobbies or activities is a great example of efficient time management.

It is said that the first step towards success is efficient time management. One who cannot manage his time properly is likely to fail at almost everything he does. Time management is the ability to utilize one’s time efficiently so as to be more productive and organized. It is said that if you master this technique you can accomplish just about anything in life. However, as simplistic as it seems, efficient time management is not something that everyone is good at. It takes a good amount of effort to achieve it. Self discipline is the key to manage your time well.

In the modern era, when everyone is leading a very busy life, and everyone has different kinds of things to put together, instead of finding out the fastest and easiest way to solve our problems to get the maximum benefits, we should always try to plan to work hard towards completing whatever we have in hand today, that is the most important or urgent task of the day and execute them, keeping our goals in view. We know there is no comparison to hard work.  However, Urgent work may not always be very important, but they seem to be very critical. By doing and finishing the most critical task of the day, we feel energetic and our brain continuously feels very active.   However, setting our priorities before working is a conventional method of time management. In this modern era, we should implement Covey’s Time Management Matrix.

According to Covey, each task can be broken down according to its urgency and importance. All in all, we have 4 categories of tasks.

Quadrant 1: Important and Urgent - Necessity

To avoid serious consequences in future, in this quadrant we have to deal with the unforeseen events and pressing problems, immediately. Most of the time, some issues are unexpected and hence proper planning may not happen. Therefore, sometimes, it’s just enough to work on them proactively- before they have become urgent.

Quadrant 2: Important but Not Urgent - Extraordinary Productivity

Tasks in this quadrant are not that urgent. We can keep them aside for some time, but this is a mistake.  Ideally, this is the quadrant where one should spend most of one’s time- working on strategic and high-impact tasks. They will bring more value to your studies, work or business. This is one way to help grow professionally and personally.

Quadrant 3: Not Important but Urgent - Distraction

Since we have to constantly keep ourselves busy, in this quadrant we have to deal with the less urgent tasks. They might distract an individual from the main goals, but as Dwight Eisenhower puts it, ‘What is urgent is seldom important. There are times when we can avoid these petty issues entirely, but the burden automatically reduces if this task gets delegated to someone else in the team or in class. If the delegation of this assignment is not possible then the same task can be completed by including small batches. The better the job, the more hours can be allocated for particular tasks thereby making the work easy.

Quadrant 4: Not Important and Not Urgent - Waste

These tasks are neither important nor urgent. Small amounts of trivial activities help us relax. Yet we tend to waste a lot of time in this quadrant, so it is always advised to be careful because we may be losing the present moment.

Therefore, time management skills and following these quadrants during studies or at the workplace becomes essential to handle every project with diligence in future. In other words, as Lord Chesterfield had mentioned, “Take care of the minutes and the hours will take care of themselves.”

Time Management is important for every individual. You must stay disciplined and constantly remind yourself as to why it is important for you to accomplish your tasks in a timely manner. Whether you are a student, homemaker, business person or a working professional if you are able to manage your time efficiently, you wouldn’t be far from attaining your goals.

Published in The Daily National Courier, January, 18 2023

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