By Chandrasoma Perera
Are you a victim of 'I have no time' attitude? If not it is very
good.
It shows that you know how to manage your time in your business and personal life. A good time manager makes timely decisions and takes timely actions. That keeps his business ahead of competition.
It shows that you know how to manage your time in your business and personal life. A good time manager makes timely decisions and takes timely actions. That keeps his business ahead of competition.
Time
management helps you to lead a stress free life, enjoy what you do in
your business as well as in life and have more time for your family and
leisure.
Time management needs self discipline. It involves self
motivation, planning and organizing the way you work. Time
Management develops you to be time conscious, skilled to identify and
accept opportunities. It gives you the ability to maximize productivity
of your work with optimum efficiency.
Why manage time? There is a
theory that says that the Work expands to fill the time available for a
task. That implies that if we do not manage time the jobs will expand to
fill the time allotted. Then, less work in more time will result.
Since
time is scarce we have to save it. We have to plan each activity to
optimize the use of time. If we allow more time for a task than
necessary, then the time will be wasted as time passed cannot be pulled
back. Since time gone is time lost we have to manage the available time
to do more.
There are barriers to time management. Some of these barriers are listed below;
a) Bad working habits,
b) Inadequacy of skills of handling tasks,
c) Fear and negative attitude,
d) Habit of postponing of doing things,
e) Poor and disorganized working environment,
f) Lack of prioritizing,
g) Absence of ore-planning and prior arrangements to perform tasks.
h) Habitually thinking that work is difficult or unpleasant,
An
important step in time management will be Goal Setting. Time Managers
are goal driven. They set goals and focus on reaching those goals by
planning meticulously each task in a way to optimize time and
performance. If you want to manage your time effectively then you too
will have to be goal focused and goal driven. You have to focus on
achieving your goals that enable you to manage your time effectively.
You can identify your goals separately as personal goals, business
goals, professional goals etc.
First thing first and for time
managers their first daily task, on rising early in the morning, is to
think of planning the days work. They plan with a fresh mind the
activities to be performed by identifying goals for the day. Then they
schedule each task on priority basis. Planning they do carefully by
putting on paper for each activity the time needed, the actions
required, how to perform or whom to delegate, deadlines for completing
etc.
It will certainly help to identify the steps needed to
achieve each task by breaking down activities in to smaller components
in a manageable sequence. You can plan your day in this manner and have
full control of your time.
The next step is to plan and find ways
to avoid interruptions like telephone calls, unannounced visitor, noise
disturbances and activities irrelevant to the task that deviate
attention. By making arrangements for avoiding disturbances will enable
the performing of the set goals as scheduled with least interruptions.
The
final routine for the day is to do a time- review. This is done by
systematically analyzing of the tasks completed as per the plans, their
rate of success and failure, what went wrong and what preventive actions
needed, what should be priority for the next day to make next day
productive and useful.
The time management enables us to focus on
what is important, to meet set deadlines and to perform important
activities as priority. The time managers identify clearly the different
nature of each activity that can be categorized as follows;
a) Urgent and important,
b) Not urgent but important,
c) Urgent but not important,
d) Not urgent and not important.
The categorization of tasks as above assists us to prioritize work, avoid stress, avoid anxiety, and focus on achieving results.
Chandrasoma Perera writes regularly on a variety of subjects.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/1915982
