Time Management: A tool for achieving set goals.

Time management is as old as humanity itself and yet it has not achieved much success with many people or rather it has been given little or no attention.

It is associated with words such as deadlines, schedules, priorities, time frame, time lag, appointments, closing date etc for example.  Nevertheless, the importance of this essential tool to the achievement of set goals in life is questionable.

Most people believe that they have always achieved optimal level with time management, however; a handful is yet to attain maximized productivity and effectiveness with it.  Many people become frustrated with a day that is unproductive while others are of the opinion that time has not been fair to them.

According to Richard Koch, “it is not that we are short of time, or even that we have too much of it. It is the way that we treat time, the way we think about it, that is the problem and the opportunity’’.

Effective time management begins from within than without. It emanates from the proper understanding of oneself. Most people understand the idea but nevertheless do not set priorities, deadlines; do not have defined goals and objective. Some have ordered their time wrongly, while a handful of others are ignorant about the idea of the management.

A research by Total Success Training Institute, UK reveals that time is uncontrollable we, can only manage ourselves and our use of it; hence time management is self management. In order to attain optimal set goals, it is essential to appreciate the techniques of time management.

Franklin Covey, Author ‘The Modern Gladiator’ emphasized the positive effect of time management on productivity, job satisfaction, self fulfilment, goal achievement and the eventual balance in every area of life. Though time management is aligned with huge benefits, to achieve appreciable success on the issue, it is important to know what aspect of our personal management need to be improved.

Some frequent occurrences or issues are responsible for reduced effectiveness in time management. It is imperative to identify these major obstacles to your time, efficiency, effectiveness and productivity.

These occurrences are referred to as’’ Time stealers’’ The following are few examples of time stealers; irrelevant phone calls, irrelevant discussions, browsing on the internet for too long, personal visitors (drop ins), procrastination and indecision, acting overloaded or  incomplete information, ineffective delegation, crisis management, unclear communication,  chatting on phone via text, inadequate technical knowledge, unclear objectives and misplacement of priorities, lack of planning, stress and fatigue, inability to say ‘’NO’’ cluttered desk and personal disorganization.

Ineffective time management could always leave people disorganized professionally as well as in private life. It often leads to stress, frustration, feeling of helplessness as well as feeling that there is too much to do.

It is essential to identify your values, goals and issues of high importance so that those values can help you to order your schedules accordingly. It is a simple process of ‘First things First’ as Franklin Covey entitled in one of his books. Attend to the important issues before they degenerate extremely into urgent status.

Identify your personal time stealer and define action plans to manage them. Set your goals and target plan actions to achieve them, prioritize your schedules, and set deadliness per task.

The ability to identify your goals will give you a sense of direction; people who do not have definite goals to pursue often drift personally and professionally. Planning your action steps will guide you towards achieving your goals and objectives, prioritizing your task will ensure that you are doing right things at the right time while setting deadlines will assist you in measuring the degree of achievement at intervals.

It is very important to organize your life. Understand the strategies and tools for effective time management. Personal diaries, organizers (electronic and paper), time schedulers, calendar, PDA’s are all examples of tools that can assist you to planning your activities. Some sophisticated business phones also have facilities that can assist you in scheduling effectively; however, such gadgets can only perform the functions where they are programmed as such.

The Microsoft outlook is also another tool for schedules management. Classifying your daily tasks on a “To Do” list in the order of importance is essential. It is important to distinguish between the important tasks and the less important ones. It is also necessary to differentiate assignments that must be achieved within a specific period from those that can be suspended to another time.

Such tasks should be attended to at your peak periods. This implies that you also need to identify the period that you are at your best and off peak periods. This will help you to order your schedules such that they can be attended to when they are important but not urgent. Tasks that degenerate into important and urgent status are great time issues which invariably are the stage of crisis management or emergencies.

A recent newspaper survey reveals how many people spend their first and last thirty minutes at work. It was revealed by most respondents that they spend their first and last 30 minutes at work on mostly nonproductive issues. According to H. Jackson Brown, “Don’t say you don’t have enough time.

You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Louis Pasteur, and Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein”, hence, manage your time effectively to achieve set goals and maintain good balance in your personal and professional life.

Time lost will never be regained and opportunity may come only but once. Why not start today to use your time wisely and achieve set goals. The choice is entirely yours.