“Time = Life. Therefore, waste your time and waste your life, or master your time and master your life.” Alan Lakein, author of personal time management.
To be successful today, one must understand what time management truly is. Psychology Today defines time management as the ability to plan and control how you spend the hours in your day to effectively accomplish your goals. Many people are stressed about the apparent lack of time. First, we should understand there are two different forms of time to manage: clock time and real-time. Clock time is basic 60 seconds to a minute, 60 minutes in an hour and so on. While on the other hand, real time is relative to individuals.
It is important to decide one’s priorities at the start of any planning phase to avoid procrastination and other obstacles. Entrepreneur.com narrates that there are only three ways to spend time: “ thoughts, conversations and actions”. While it is impossible to eliminate all interruptions in our lives, we do get a say on how much time we will spend on them and how much time we will spend on the thoughts, conversations and actions that will lead to our success.
Vanderbilt’s Medical School says, “skills involved in managing your time include planning for the future, setting goals, prioritizing tasks, monitoring where your time actually goes.
Start small to get the wheels turning. If you are someone who tends to procrastinate and have little self-control, the best way to start practicing time management is to start writing down your hourly activities. Once you can visually see where the majority of your day is spent, you will be able to decide whether your activities match up with your priorities and whether they’re congruent with your goals. Planning for your future allows you do decide what you should do now. After you’re able to visually see where your days are going, cut any activities that are wasteful and unnecessary. It is important to find what is meaningful to you and how to be successful at it by managing the time you have to get better daily.
