How to overcome struggles with time management

If you cannot manage your time, you cannot manage your life as a person. There is a lot of struggle that comes with time management especially if you are not used to it. How then can you handle the struggles?   

Time management, according to Brian Tracy, is personal management, life management and management of yourself. A lot of people deal with poor time management, and as a result, find themselves being a perfectionist, forgetting their vision, scheduling tasks ineffectively, not having a regular time review, not being able to cope with stress, poorly delivering their tasks, experiencing lack of productivity and lots more.   

Time is an important factor that a person cannot do without. People literally have to deal with doing more than one thing with time in check.   

There’s a need to understand how important time management is, and how to use it for your gain, and for your productivity.   

A lot of people have to deal with time management while dealing with procrastination, work, sleep, and many other things demanding their time.   

What is time management?   

According to Mind Tools, time management is the process of organising and planning how to divide your time between different activities.  

It is the process of planning and organising how your time will be spent amidst other activities in order to increase productivity, effectiveness and efficiency.   

Get it right, and you’ll end up working smarter, not harder. 

You will get more work done in less time – even when time is tight and pressures are high.   

Why is time management important?  

• It helps you manage stress: Organisation and planning of your time between activities will help you to manage stress. It prevents you from putting your energy into fruitless work and helps you focus on or channel your energy into important tasks.   
• Increase in productivity and quality of work: When you have your time properly scheduled, the quality of work that would be produced will be improved compared to when you just run through the day without a goal.   
• Saves time:  Having a proper schedule for the day helps you perform tasks in time, and helps to blur out irrelevancies that can eat into your time.    
• Quality time for other things: There’s quality time to attend to matters outside your task for the day. You could rest, keep up with relationships, or do anything else that matters to you. In other words, it helps you give time to other important things.  
• Separates relevancies from irrelevancies: Time management involves properly organizing your tasks and having a good plan ahead that helps you keep your focus on the important things, and separate them from the unimportant or irrelevant things. It helps you to identify what is relevant to a particular time from what is not relevant so that you don’t spend time on what will not be productive. 
• It gives room for more opportunities: Time management helps you complete tasks on time and gives you room for other important things that were not in your goals before  

How then do you use time management to your advantage?  

• Be aware of the need for it: There’s a saying that when the importance of something is not known abuse is inevitable. When you don’t realise that your time needs to be managed you would waste time doing unimportant things.  
• Acceptance:  You need to accept that you need your time to be managed. It’s not enough to be aware. What are you doing with what you know? Denying it or accepting it.  

• Set SMART Goals:  

When setting your goals ensure that they are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound. Your goals should be detailed. It should contain what needs to be done, how it should be done, and when it should be done. Don’t map them in your mind, learn to write them down with a pen and paper, or on your device — just make sure it is written down.  

• Prioritise tasks wisely: Placing priority on your tasks will help you get rid of procrastination. It would help you determine the important ones and the urgent ones.  

Here’s a guideline on how to determine what’s important and what’s urgent for time management 

1. Important and urgent: These ones should be done immediately.  
2. Important but not urgent: Decide when to do the tasks.   
3. Urgent but not important: You can always outsource help for this so that you can focus on other important things.   
4. Not urgent and not important: You can do these ones at a later time.   

Learn to say NO  

This can be hard sometimes to do, but it’s possible.  If you have a specific time allotted to an important task, and a person comes with an offer that does not match your goals, you have the right to say NO. You should only take the offer if you have thought carefully about it and you think you can deal with it.  Only respond, after you’ve carefully thought about it. Don’t say yes and regret it, likewise don’t say no and regret it.   

Set a time limit for each task

This will help you stay focused and more efficient. It helps you detect possible problems that could arise at a later time and help you proffer solutions in advance.  

Prioritise breaks

Take breaks in between to stay focused and motivated. What do you do with the breaks? Clear your head, eat, take a nap, go for a walk, catch up on random things and lots more.   

Delegation

Do not avoid delegation. If you do, it would wear you out and stress you. And this could lead to less productivity. Outsource help for the things you don’t necessarily have to do yourself.  

Avoid multitasking

Not everyone can do well with performing more than one task at a time. That’s why it’s important to set time limits for each task.   

What happens when you don’t use time management to your advantage?   

• Time would be wasted.   
• Poor quality of work.
• Stress could lead to illness if not properly handled.   
• Your goals will be ineffective.
• You’d be unproductive. 
• Poor reputation when work is poorly done.
• Loss of control over time.