HOW TIME MANAGEMENT CAN MAKE YOU AND YOUR LIFE BETTER

ncsaplan on January 4, 2022

“HOW TIME MANAGEMENT CAN MAKE YOU AND YOUR LIFE BETTER”​

What have you finished today? Look around your room, is your bed made? Have you turned in your papers yet and are not cramming to get it done before the deadline, which is in about 5 minutes? How about the laundry, still lying on the dirty floor that you forgot to clean? Dishes, trash cans– are they emptied yet?

If your answer to most, if not, all of these questions are “No,” don’t lose hope. We’re here to help.

Now, there are people who answered “Yes,” to these questions and you’re probably wondering how they do it. No, they don’t have magic or superpowers. But what they do have is the mastery of an art we call ‘Time Management’.

What is Time Management? Simply put, time management is a tool or guide that aids individuals to appropriately plan out and execute tasks. It helps administer them duly in a schedule most fit to provide them with the most benefits, taking into account the limited time they’ve got and improve productivity, efficiency, and good decision-making.

Pros

There’s an abundance of benefits and conveniences to be found in implementing time-management, making life easier to those who manage to incorporate it to their daily lives, like:

  • Being more professional

Passing on time or even earlier is a commended skill in the office. Do you ever feel accomplished whenever you finish a work-paper a day ahead of the deadline, knowing you have all the time in the world to lay back and admire your hard work? Show up to a meeting confidently, knowing you took your time to go over the agendas and to make yourself look presentable.

Having an organized work-schedule would often leave you with praises from co-workers and bosses, not to mention the confidence and self-esteem you’d gain from it.

  • Organized

When doing tasks, we often do multiple things at once or as we like to call it, multi-tasking, due to a busy schedule. But with time management, you can breeze through your to-do list only to find that you’d have extra time to kill.

  • Better workflow

In the office, there are a lot of people who wait till the last day, last hour or even down to the last minutes or seconds to finish their work.

You’ll likely see them on a Tuesday midnight trip to their nearest convenience store to stock up on snacks, energy drinks, coffee or even some liquor for their all-nighter all because they had ‘forgotten’ to write their report. They would show up to work the next day with heavy bags, complaining about a massive hang-over and sipping on their fifth morning coffee like it’s their oxygen.

Now, pulling all-nighters are unavoidable especially in a work environment but doing it often and it becoming a part of your routine is unprofessional, not to mention unhealthy both physically and emotionally.

  • More career opportunities

A good workflow would help you excel in the office, gaining positive feedback, attention and in turn giving you more opportunities. Raise, promotion, recommendations, who knows?

  • Achieving goals

Our goals, though vastly different, have things in common. We all work our fingers to the bone just to save up for that big house, raise a family, travel the world, have an extravagant wedding, buy that engagement ring, help your parents, have an early retirement.

These are just the common things we all strive for yet they all seem out of reach when we dream of it. But organizing would give you a boost up to reach that goal of yours and give you skills in the long haul.

  • No more stress

And of course, stress is a major part of working and even just our daily lives. It is an inevitable part of the circle of life, but it doesn’t mean that we have to suffer through it every time we need something done but it intervenes with a plan you’ve already made with your friends.

They say time is your enemy when it comes to this, but it doesn’t have to be. Working with time and using it as an advantage to take away stress is possible.

Best Practices

  • Set goals accordingly

Find an app, set alarms, utilize post-its, grab a pen and paper. It doesn’t have to be fancy, so long as you can make sure that your schedule is clean and do-able. Set specific goals that you know you are able to accomplish in the given time.

  • Prioritize

This is where decision-making becomes relevant and necessary. Time management requires you to be able to identify which are important and also needs you to be able to set-aside things that are irrelevant. For example, making an exemption for important family nights is okay, but playing games instead of doing your assigned work that are due the next day is not.

  • Time limits

Knowing yourself is important in time management, knowing how and when you are able to do something, with who and where you are comfortable with and what exceptions you would be willing to do. There are instances wherein you need to apply the Pomodoro technique.This implies that you work on a series of 25 minutes and have a quick break in between.

  • Breaks

Breaks are important to regulate yourself. Tasks are not punishments, therefore you should know your limits. Take your needed breaks and cold down before you get back to work. Time management is a way of self-development and requires adaptation and balance to help you improve and find the best way for you to succeed.

  • Self control

Time limits and breaks are, of course, set on self-control. Unnecessary objects, distractions and activities should be prioritised after the necessary ones, if possible is to be completely ignored.
  • 9-13 minutes set aside for time management and planning ahead would save you almost 2 hours worth of wasted time and energy.
  • 9 AM and 12 PM is when employees work their hardest.
  • The rate of the number of employees that dislikes work on a Monday morning reaches 80% and drops down to 60% on Fridays.

Time management is lengthy but a worthwhile process. It is not only beneficial in a work-setting but also brings you life-long skills that you’d need to utilize in daily living and improves you as a person, allowing you to become the best version of yourself.