How To Manage Your Time

How to manage your time is often thought of in relation to increasing productivity at work.  Demand on our time, however, increases from not only work but also from traveling, family, education, fitness and leisure activities. No wonder many people feel overwhelmed! Some even develop mental illnesses that involve anxiety attacks as well as procrastination. Here I share time management skills I learnt the hard way, through experience.

Do You Need To Learn How To Manage Your Time?

You can tell a lot about a person from just knowing how they organise their time.  Are you a home-maker who needs to balance caring for your family with self-care? Are you a business owner in charge of organising the times of your employees as well as yours? Are you a mother with a career, like me, who employs people at home and for clerical functions so that you have enough time for your family?

Your relationship with time can only fit in one of three categories:

1) Balanced: This person gets things done calmly and efficiently.

2) Over-doer:  They are like headless chickens, they rush around at high speed, involved in many projects at once. They are overwhelmed and on their way to burn out.

3) Avoider:  They appear as if they are not motivated for anything. In fact their willingness to achieve is inhibited.  These people’s inner conflicts are so strong that they are procrastinating a lot of the time and they tend to pass their time with addictions.

 

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          Avoider                                           Balanced                                                    Over-doer

 

Skills On  How To Manage Your Time

Wherever you are on this scale, there are some principles you can implement on how to manage your time:

1. Set yourself clear goals in life. Only say ‘yes’ to things that will help you achieve them.
2. Accept that we tend to have conflicting goals in life and we need to balance them.
3. Face your inner conflicts and be firm with your boundaries despite your fears and conditionings.
4. Move beyond needing to please everyone.
5. Learn to negotiate the tasks delegated to you at work. Often we want to be better than our peers. We think stretching ourselves will make us better students, professionals, employees, however we tend to burn out.
6. Make a list of urgent tasks for the day from the night before. Tick them as you complete.
7. Tackle the most difficult and most undesirable tasks first when you are fresh.
8. If the task is too big divide into chunks of work, spread it over days and weeks.
9. Give yourself always extra time for tasks.
10. Limit your work hours to avoid overworking. Ask yourself if you might be using your work to fill a personal void.
11. Make sure you have complete rest days. You can get more done when you are rested.

How To manage Your Time Is More Than What It Seems

Often I hear people being upset with themselves for not following through their decisions.  However it is all information. When the path in front of us is not what we planned it is best to stay curious and compassionate with ourselves and others.  Learning how to manage your time is nothing other than learning how to live life elegantly.