Effective Time Mangement: Simple steps!

In the previous post, we talked about the importance of waking up early in the morning. We learned how to brighten the day when your environment starts turning bright. The essential of time management is not to try too hard. Keep the target simple. But achieve the target. To be short, simple and achievable target is the key to success. Efficient time management from day one will make you weak and tried. It would be wise to add sips of time management tricks day by day. Let’s jump to the other steps involve in efficient time management.

Important & necessary:

Most people find little to complete all the job of a day. Not only those complain, all of us leave behind some part or whole part of the job for another day. To be practical, it is quite common and we can’t help it. So it is good not to worry about your lost day but focus on what was done and how efficient the work was done. Yet, many of us might question, “Hey man! The work which was procrastinated was very important and serious to my business! How come you say it as common?”

The trick used by successful time management is to classify your work. You can tag your work as follows:

·        Important

·        Necessary

Important are “must be done but has some more time to finish it” while Necessary are “well timed work”. Both might be mutually exclusive or inclusive depending upon circumstances of your day. I wish I don’t get too technical here. To keep it simple: “You received telephone bill with 10 days to settle the dues.” It is important but not necessary. “Your boss calls you while doing a work”. Yet the work is far more important, it is necessary to answer your boss. Your work can be done for whole day but your boss will not wait for your answer.

I guess the above examples will help you understand the two tags: important and necessary. While all important work are not necessary but all necessary are important. An imminent work gains necessary status which can’t be subjected to procrastination.

But it is immature to preclude not all important works are not necessary. We find ourselves with “important and necessary” task to do. So, this kind of task gets priority over other tasks ahead. So create priorities for your daily task. At first we may find it time consuming to classify our daily job. But with few days of practice, we will do on-the-fly.

To make it simple further, follow the below mentioned priorities for each task:

1.     Important and necessary

2.     Not important but necessary

3.     Not Necessary but important

4.     Not important and not necessary

The 2^nd & 3^rd priority are interchangeable depending upon the tasks on our hand: “You were handed with telephone bill with 10 days to settle the dues.” It is not important but necessary. If you didn’t find time in that day to pay the bill, it will not hurt you. When it is the last day to settle the bill, it will turn “important and necessary” task. So, it is not the rule of thumb to follow the priorities always. But this will happen very rarely.

You have completed all the work for that day and returned home. All home chores are completed. Now, you will definitely find time to pay the bill (not necessary but important) .Yet it is good to apply simple common sense while scheduling the task. Not all tasks are same.

As the days pass on, we will find ourselves sub-classifying our daily task with in the four priorities.

Time spent on entertainment:

Now it’s party time. How much time you spent on entertainment? Does it really matter! Most people expect an enjoyable life. So entertainment play important role to keep us relax.

Most of us think entertainment is expendable. The time spent on amusement could be invested on productive work on that day. The above assumption will ruin our day further. All must have their own time for amusement. A time spent on your own well-being is not waste of time. So spend some time on other leisure activities when available. A 5 minutes good chats and jokes will relieve you of your stress and tension.

Happiness not only depends upon the amount of money you made in that day. It is good have some time for friends and family. This will not question our time management skill. For being productive, we can’t lose sight on what we try to have at the end of the day. It will always be a happy life. Keep schedule to perform all the tasks on hand but make sure we spent time with our family and friends.

After all, we work for them. We took our job to meet the needs of our family. So to be obsessed with our job will do more harm than good. Our family relationship is lost. Further, we will develop fatigue and sickness. Soon we will feel the work uncomfortable. Thus, loss in productivity. The end result is you will find the available time inadequate.

So, don’t get obsessed with profession. If you prefer to be a loner then you can skip this part. But for people seeking normal life, overcoming obsession will play magic both in personal as well as professional life.

Habit of saying “No”:

The weird strategy to follow is saying “no” to anyone who requests us to work on matter not worthy of our time. Really, most part of life is spent on nothing. 80-20 rule plays vital role. 80% of our life time spent on useless or non-productive work. To be efficient time manager, we have to build the habit of saying “no” for anything which will waste your time.

But we can’t have any hard or soft rule to this habit. When we find ourselves end up with least priorities, you consider saying “yes”. But an imminent task lay ahead it would be wise enough to give a strict “no”.

Some may find this habit and the preceding section as contradicting. But it is not. If we start to follow schedules for our family & friends and profession then it will not conflict with other strategy. Consider, “You have meeting by 8 o clock morning. But your friend calls you for a night party”. An involuntary answer would be “no”. If we play any diplomacy, there will be high probable chance of messing up our business meeting.

We may find ourselves in more awkward situation. When uncertainty looms, better we should answer it with “no”. Playing chances would spoil other day.

Some might feel skeptical about this habit. “Won’t it spoil our relationship with friends & family if we answer in negative? My boss won’t appreciate my negative answer!” Alright, to avoid tussles say no when one sphere encroaches upon another. When we spend time with family, our bosses should be kept at abeyance. Anyhow, our boss will find a way to convey the message when we return to work.

But never say “no” at the time of contingency. For any emergency help or unforeseen accident, respond with immediate effect. As all we know there is no foolproof method for time management.

Think of your goal often:

Actual time management is all about how good we feel about the day when it ends. So if we achieve our goal then we feel the day was really productive and we utilized our time effectively. So the whole time management will feel like a psychological assessment. If we make it, we feel satisfied for the day.

But nothing is achieved in a single day. We have to invest numerous day hours on our goals before we rejoice over the result. The common human tendency is to have reluctance after a few days of vigor. For long-term goals, it is good to split up the targets. Each target must be feasible for that day. Completing day by day target will surprise us. One day we will wonder our long-term goals were achieved with ease.

It is similar to pie by pie approach to eat a big cake. Short term targets and goals keep us motivated. For long term goals, we have to create a short and achievable daily targets. The very big achievement starts with simple steps.

“If you feel you are losing focus on your goal, then write it down in a piece of paper. It will keep you focused on your goal. But I am not sure about it scientifically. But writing it down is good way to keep you motivated and will remind you of your goal”. Sometimes unquestionable stupid things work well. Focusing on the goal will reduce the time spent on unrelated activities. Once such activities are taken out of equation you will find yourself with ample time to muddle with.

Sleep well:

Most hard workers are against the sound sleep. For them who work hard with sleepless night will achieve their goals. We can’t assure that. Not to blame them, that was others thought us from childhood. One who works hard, sacrificing one owns sleep, will succeed in life. But one golden theory was never spoken. They forgot us to educate how to be efficient worker than to be hard worker.

Sleepless night for only meant to night shift workers. The effective to keep a day long is to do all the work in efficient manner. But it need a calm and relax mind. So having a good sound sleep in a day is must for anyone who which to be effective next day.

We can check the effectiveness of the people based on the sleep. How sound your bed time will make you calm and relax. It will improve focus and concentration. Few people get new ideas while they sleep. If you are one of them, then sleep is the best remedy for any creativity block that hogs you.

It doesn’t mean that all those work hard relentlessly are doing it bad. It all about how efficient we might be otherwise. As stated above, obsession with something will create a block on thinking. To overcome such block, a calm and sound sleep is the remedy. The serenity will create new opportunity and new methods to achieve your goals. In present world, only way to get serenity is through sleep where we think of nothing around us. Brain will work on one thing which you sow as goals to achieve.

Having sound 8 hours of sleep will improve our professional productivity. And helps us keep happy. The most desirous life is to live happily. So we have to find the happiness within ourselves than seeking it from other sources.

Naps & breaks:

Do you remember the day one lesson on time management? It was said to wake up early. But the drawback is dizziness throughout the day. Not only the break the dizziness to keep you fresh and energized a short nap is enough. Take a nap for 5 to 15 minutes before the second part of your day. All you will feel energized and motivated.

It is not only limited to naps. How about a chat with co-workers? Discussing funny and weird things happen on work floor day to day. To break monotony, periodic breaks serve as safety value to vent out the boredom.

If it is needed you can try to laugh out loud to relieve stress and moodiness which are resultant of long boring work. Once you overcome the monotony, you are able to get back to work with some vigor compared to the work done without breaks. After all, we are not robots programmed to do a job tirelessly.

Natural tendency of human being is to getting indifferent towards things done repeatedly. We cannot blame anybody. It is how we are created. We are cursed with our brain that it needed heterogeneous acts to keep it focused and concentrated. When you have a break, don’t talk about your work. Talk about something irrelevant to your job. The purpose of breaks is to keep you focused on job. This will improve efficiency. Thus reduce the time consumed on the work completion.

Whatever we might do, the fact that a day consist of 24 hours will not change. So it is up to us to decide how we utilize our day. The above methods are simple and practical methods which will make you work efficiently thus managing your time. Don’t force yourself hard to follow. Try it. It will come out gradually.