Download - Time management
How Do You Manage Your Time?
By- Sumit Shinde, Dinesh Karthik, Nishchay Garg
At some time in your life, you have taken a time
management class, read about it in books, and tried to use various mobile
based applications of day planner to organize and schedule your day. "Do
we succeed in it?" The answer is simple. It didn't work, why?
Before you can even begin to manage time, you must
learn what time is. A dictionary defines time as "the point or period at
which things occur." Put simply, time is when things happens.
The ability to work faster and get more done in less
time is not slavery, its freedom. You are going to have the same amount
of workload to do every day whether you want it or not. If you can be
more efficient, you can get it done and still have some time left over for
yourself— whether it’s to read the paper, spend time with family, do
exercise, play badminton or the piano.
Instead of being robotic in how you approach tasks, try to
be thoughtful and always asking yourself if something can be done more
efficiently or eliminated altogether. Managing time is not about doing as
many tasks into day as possible. It’s about simplifying how you work,
doing things faster, and relieving stress. It’s about generating space in life
to make time for people, play, and rest.
There are enough hours in a day for everything you would like to do, but
it may take a bit of rearranging and re-imagining to find them.
Goals of Time Management.
To be able to have control over your life - manage your time, don't let it
manage you. To be healthier and happier.
Value your time
Almost everyone complains about not having enough time. Yet the many
people act like they don’t give value to their time. That is contradictory.
Everyone’s time have value. To understand this value and make it
meaningful, we need to assign an actual cost per hour value to our time.
“Life is tough; it takes a lot of your time.”-Sean morey
Using the phone efficiently and effectively
You can use the phone as an effective tool in getting and keeping co-
operation with others. Answer your calls on the first or second ring, if
possible. This gives the caller the impression that you are responsive and
efficient.
Keep conversations short. Brief conversations save time and your listener
will be grateful for them. Stick to the point while talking on the
Increase efficiency 10%
Do you feel pressured? Do you feel like you don’t have enough
time even to breathe during the day? YES, you may be thinking. But it
probably is not really like this.
Try this experiment
Set up a video camera in your room. Turn it on. Record yourself
when you are studying. Then watch the tape.
You will see yourself daydreaming, looking out from window, chatting
idly with roommates, making prolonged personal calls, drinking water,
fussing with your hair and doing all sorts of time wasting or inefficient
activities.
When I did this experiment, for the first 10-15minutes I was
studying like a most sincere student of my college. After 15minutes I
started breaking backbone like I am studying from many hours, then after
30minutes of reading, in the middle I thought something and started
searching for it.
After 1 hour of study friend knocked my door and asked me for
the Maggie and I said “yes” and then 5 minutes of discussion about what
are you reading, why you are reading this and attack of suggestions by
him.
I managed to get out of this discussion and started doing my
work. Again after 10 minutes maids came with all there cleaning stuff and
that was disastrous disturbance for me. I simply went outside and ate
Maggie with friend. Then I came back to my work and think what? I was
feeling so sleepy after having full 2 packs of Maggie that I directly kept
my laptop away and slept for 2 hours. The main problem is yet to come,
so I woke up after 2 hours that time I was so dizzy that capacity of doing
work decreased and I ended up my day doing work with low efficiency.
My Learning from this experiment
While studying you don’t mind these things. You think they
are necessary break to release stress. But on video they are painful to
watch and the recordings will clearly show that you can easily cut down
on wasted time at least 10% without getting stressed.
That time I should have locked my door so no one could have
disturbed me. What we can do for this is, creating blocks of prime time
when you can concentrate on your hardest tasks without interruption.
Schedule easy tasks outside of this prime time block. Writing blogs,
reading journals, doing book review can all be done at times when you
are not completely focused on a project.
Keep your prime-time block sacred. If your prime is 7pm to
9pm and don’t even think about scheduling exercise workout session or
playing badminton at 8pm. This would break up your block.
Work Habits That Speeds You Up:
Eliminate bad habit that waste time: First, we should identify
any bad habits that waste our time. For me, it was sleeping an hour after
I first woke up in the morning. Because the morning is the most
productive work time for me. By forcing myself to get dressed and go to
the college when I wake up, instead of falling back into bed, I increased
my productivity tremendously.
For others, it may be watching a football match or TV programs till late
night in the lobby, spending too much time surfing the web, talking on
phone.
“I am always quarreling with time! It is so short to do
something and so long to do nothing.”- Queen Charlotte
After you have identified the bad habits, make a list of the ones you must
avoid.
Determine Priorities
Can you always work on what you want to work on, right when
you want to work on it? What is you answer, Most of the people will be
having answer as No. Sometimes, a pressing deadlines means putting
aside a more pleasurable task and doing formidable tasks.
In my room, I have posted a list on the wall. It contains different
levels, from level 1 to level 8 and before the end-term I have to reach level
6. This is the goal set by me and list will remind me of my goal everytime.
It reminds me of what I have to do to reach higher level. You must set
priorities and meet deadlines. One can enjoy life only if he or she
prioritizes time.
Overcome Procrastination
Procrastination is opportunity’s assassin. Procrastination is
the single biggest factor causing people to fall behind in their work, miss
deadlines.
Having a daily to-do list– and then assigning yourself various tasks
throughout the day in one hour increments. It helps you to stay on track
and avoid putting things off.
As long as you have your short term deadlines and long term
goals in mind, you can be somewhat flexible in your daily schedule,
adjusting tasks and time slots to match your enthusiasm for each task.
Give yourself rewards for accomplishing tasks. If you work for a solid
hour on budget that is slow going, reward yourself with a break to read
your mail or walk around the office building.
Avoid Distractions
Outside distractions can be a major time– waster, if you let them.
An outside distraction is any unscheduled activity that interrupts the task
your are currently working on.
For instance, if you are dedicated in the evening to working on
presentation, and an old friend asks you to join for a reunion, that's an
outside distraction.
The key is to avoid disturbances as much as possible. If interruptions are
a real problem, try setting aside a period every day during which you will
meet with people and take phone calls. The rest of time is private time in
which you can work.
Most people say they complete more work when they work without
disturbance till the work is done. The main idea is to do things on our
schedule, rather than the schedules of others. It is not always possible.
Take pause and think, do I really want to be productive?
If I want to be super productive, they are certain things I will
have to give up. These things include laziness, thinking random things
for no reason and wasted idle time.
Sometime I think about the past memories and other random thoughts
which comes in my mind and it eats a lot of mental energy and time and
I start feeling lazy. I need to stop doing all these. If I am not willing to
give these up, I must seriously question whether being more productive
is truly a priority in my life.
Set high goals:
Many students who are ambitious look at other students, see
how their performance are and set their own goals slightly higher. But,
this will not make us productive. The majority have limited outputs. So
even if we do better than them our output will still be small.
“If you stay committed, your dreams can come true” -
Michael Blake
Do not use the average performing classmate as a role model for
productivity.
Set realistic but ambitious goals. Don not be afraid to take on challenges
and try new things.
Gain 10% more energy
Here are some things which we can do to improve our energy
levels.
Drink cold water, juice or other fluids thought the day. If you are feeling
sleepy while studying and in a class during the lecture, drinking cold
water gives immediate refreshing effect.
Wash your face
Another refreshing effect of cold water is its feel on your skin. If you are
studying in late night or early in the morning wash face with cold water
it has a nice wake-up effect.
Go to bed an hour earlier
If you are just sitting around at night, killing time by surfing on internet,
checking friends Facebook profiles, checking WhatsApp, stop this and
turn of the lights and go to sleep. The extra sleep will increase the energy
in the next morning.
Eat breakfast.
Even something small. Personally, I am not hungry in the morning. But a
light snack about an hour after getting up helps revitalizing.
Avoid big meals in the middle of the day. Big meals makes us sleepy. We
can eat more small meals instead of having big meals. Do not drink
alcohol during the workday. Studies shown that alcohol may make you
drowsy and impair you mental abilities.
Take multivitamin
Vitamin, minerals and health foods are helpful for balancing the body.
Even if you don’t have time to investigate nutrition, at least take a
multivitamin. So, your basic minimum daily requirements will be taken
care of.
Take a nap
Try a 15 to 20 minute nap when you are really tired. This can be especially
effective if you don’t get enough sleep at night. Keep the nap of 20
minutes because longer than 20 minutes nap will leave you groggy for the
rest of the day. Don’t nap too late in the day as it can make falling asleep
at bedtime more difficult.
Get out of bed earlier
Don’t oversleep. It wastes time and can make you groggy. If morning is
your high energy period, sleeping late wastes the majority of your most
productive time of the day.
How can we know when we are oversleeping? If we wake up naturally that
is without alarm and go back to bed. That is oversleeping.
If we use an alarm clock and feel refreshed after waking up. But then fall
back into bed because it’s warm, dark, and comfortable. Then we are
oversleeping.
Get up 1 hour earlier every day. This will not make us tired, this one hour
early start is incredible luxury. We can do extra things in this time and
get ready in peace an clam and we will be not late in the lectures.
Monitor your sleep
Studies have shown that most people need eight hours of sleep. Few
students don’t sleep whole night for preparing for the exam or
presentations this sleep deprivation dulls their mental edge.
During exams, students who sleep less so they can study more
and get more done may accomplishing the opposite.
A major cause of poor sleep is sometime we think about work
problems before sleeping. So clearing mind of all worries before going to
bed each night is necessary.
Try relaxation techniques
Relaxation techniques are activities that help you relax when you want to
so that you can recharge your batteries and have energy when you need.
There are many ways to relax. Some people practice yoga. It is known for
its ability to reduce stress and increase mental discipline and
concentration to relax.
Another popular relaxation technique is meditation.
Meditation is a simple, natural, effortless procedure practiced for 15-20
minutes in the morning and evening, while sitting comfortable with the
eyes closed.
During this the individual experiences a unique state of restful alertness.
As the body becomes relaxed, the mind transcends all mental activity to
experience the simplest form of awareness.
Hobbies helps to release stress
The best way to take your mind off your work is with a hobby that fills
your free time. Pick a hobby that offers you something you can’t get on
the work. For example of you are in college all day, try hiking, camping,
bicycle riding or some other physical activity.
Get organized
Getting organized does require effort, but the long term rewards far
exceed the short– term costs.
“Organization is the key to moving forward in life or in
business” —Professional organizer Sandee Corshen
Disorganized peoples are inefficient because they have to expend extra
time and effort. Returning a book to library on the last date of return
period on a busy day.
These activities waste time because of poor organizational and planning
skills. Carry a pocked to-do list. Write down thoughts and ideas as they
occur. Carry a pad and pen so you can write reminders, notes, ideas and
Priority items as you think of them.
Learn to say no
Making a lot of time commitments can teach us how to manage our time.
This can be a great thing. At some point, you need to learn to decline
opportunities.
Your objective should be to take on only those commitments that you
know you have time for and that you truly care about.
Exercise and eat healthily
Numerous studies have linked a healthy lifestyle with work productivity.
Similar to getting enough sleep, exercising and eating healthily boost
energy levels, clear your mind, and allow you to focus more easily.
Summary
Thus Time Management is of utmost importance to any person
who wants to give a stellar performance in any activity of life or otherwise
also. The concepts which we have mentioned above are a testimony to the
fact that Time in itself is a priority. The more you use your time
productively, the wiser you become in the circle of life.
“Time is Money” said an anonymous person. This is the mantra
followed by all the high flying entrepneurs and business honchos all over
the world. The concept of Time has been equated to money over here
which is required for overall sustenance. Time and its preciousness has
been placed on a high pedestal. But this may not be true for all, as one
may take a short period of time to reach the altar of success compared to
the other who will take a much longer period to be successful.
“Yesterday is history, today is the gift and tomorrow is a
mystery”. So, enjoy the present (gift) that is today and don’t worry about
the past or the future.
Avoid Overload Include time for rest, relaxation, sleep, eating,
exercise, and socializing in your schedule. Take short breaks during study
and work periods. Don’t put everything off until the last minute (for
example, don't cram for exams).Learn to say "no" when appropriate and
to negotiate better deadlines when appropriate.
Relax you all over there reading our content on Time Management, this
is not the gospel of truth which we are trying to preach you, these are just
pieces of thoughts put together collectively by us.
These concepts may not hold true for all of us as each and
every one of us are differently wired in this universe with our own
ideologies and convictions. Therefore have a good time by reading our
article and keep an eye on the needles at the same time.
References:
Successful Time Management
By Patrick Forsyth
The 25 Best Time Management Tools & Techniques: How to Get More
Done Without Driving Yourself Crazy
By Pamela Dodd, Doug Sundheim
Time Management: Proven Techniques for Making Every Minute
Count
By Richard Walsh
Time Management Make Every Second Count by Robert V Bally