Time Management Tips

Time management tips to help you manage your tasks effectively and avoid unnecessary stress and tension in your professional and personal life.

The skills and techniques you adopt to accomplish your tasks and goals in a given time is Time Management. It includes activities like planning, allocating, setting goals, prioritizing, monitoring and many more. It is very important that your time management should be efficient and effective.

Importance of time management

Time is the most precious resource we have. The uniqueness of this resource is- it is available to everybody. It is not so with other resources like money, movable or immovable assets, knowledge etc.- some may have and some may not.

Every one of us has the same amount of time in a day and same number of weeks in a month and so on.

You can’t preserve it for future use- once a minute has passed, it has gone forever.

In this present day fast paced life, with ever increasing work load and impossible deadlines, unless you adopt efficient and effective time management techniques, you are going to lose in your professional and personal life. You will be over stressed and lose mental peace. Your health gets affected.

If you properly manage your regular tasks well, you will have time for your hobbies.

People often cut down activities that are healthy and... helpful in building relationships, to save time. This increases stress levels, leading to health problems later on.

You may have a lot of knowledge and can do things better. But are you dependable? When you don’t do your work in time, you are not dependable. People will not take your commitment seriously.

Time management tips

Is your family starved of your time?

I read a story:
A boy asked his busy father, “Dad, how much do you earn per hour?”
Dad replied, “100 Rupees”
The boy took out some coins and notes from his pocket and said, “I saved some money dad. Please have it and take some time off from your work so that we can have lunch together and spend some time.”

Do you spend quality time with your family? A simple ‘yes’ will not do. How much time?

People don’t have time even to eat breakfast or drink coffee. They gulp it hurriedly. You don’t have time to answer your child’s query. No time to sit with your spouse and discuss. No time for parents and friends. No social life. How long was it since you leisurely sat enjoyed your coffee? No time..no time..no time.

What are you running after and why? Why don’t we have time?

We have time. Fortunately it does not increase or decrease as we would have wished. You got 24 hours in a day. You can neither get more nor less, what ever you do. You can get reasonable amount of time for all important things in life, provided you don’t over load yourself with a particular activity, say, office work, for example.

Managing your time and scheduling your tasks are inter-related. If you schedule your tasks well, you are a better time manager. You can have time for all the tasks. You can manage more work load with out getting stressed. Scheduling work related tasks alone is not enough. Include personal life also in the schedule: time with your family, friends, your hobbies and social activities. Some of these activities may be included only on some particular days in a week and some in daily schedule.

Time Management Tips: Create schedules

What does your work schedule look like? Did you create one? If not, do it. Do you have desk calendar? Write down every task as it comes. Even a simple one including your personal ones.

Time should be managed with care and precision. Prioritize the tasks- important and urgent. Managing your time efficiently helps everybody in the workplace. A wasted minute never comes back. Keep a desk calendar on you PC. You can download it for free. It will remind you about important dates and scheduled tasks.

Always keep a pocket book. When your PC is not with you, use your pocket book to note down. Note down your personal tasks on one side of the book and your official ones on the other. Copy those points into your PC as soon as you can, with more details as space is not a constraint. Date and time are very important.

It is better to avoid using your official PC to note your personal matters. List out all the tasks- those you initiated and those require your response. List them into two groups- Urgent and Important.

Set priorities. Against each task, indicate the expected date and time of action, it may be action by you or by somebody else. When action is initiated for a particular task, note the details- type of action and by whom, date, time and any relevant information. A follow up may be required later.

Time Management Tips: Don't convert normal tasks into urgent

Don’t neglect tasks until they become urgent. There are people who believe that your importance will shoot up when you delay action until it becomes urgent. Keep it in cold storage until everybody runs after you, they say. You are converting a normal task into an urgent one. Please don’t do that. It is going to backfire one day.

When you schedule your tasks well and finish them in time, people around you including your boss will follow you. They will know your schedules and will not interfere with them. Since you have a scheduled time with your family, you will have balanced work-life and personal life.

Time Management Tips: Manage your emails properly

During my regular job days, one of my colleagues always kept his email inbox folder open. ‘I am expecting some urgent mails,’ he used to tell. I happened to visit his office quite a few times and this ‘expecting some urgent mails’ was a regular affair. This man did not follow any time management tips. He always looked busy but his projects were always behind schedule

Keep a time slot for checking and answering mails. Keep separate folders for urgent, important and general mails. Even though urgent and important mails need immediate attention, don’t neglect other mails. They become urgent if you delay.

Time Management Tips: Your Personal tasks

Allot time slots for your personal tasks as well. Some may be daily tasks such as physical exercise, spending quality time with your family. Some may be weekly activities such as taking your family for a movie, an amusement park or visiting a relative. There could be occasional tasks like some social functions, community activities. You also need to schedule less frequent activities like going on vacation.

You must realize that your personal tasks/goals are equally, if not more, important. If you don’t manage them properly, you get into relationship problems that can creep into your work life.

Follow these Time Management Tips to sail easily and happily through your personal and work life.

Time management for Moms offers help with goal setting, time management and living the life of your dreams for busy moms.

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