Effective Management of Your Own Time

Thomas Simon

The phrase “time management” has recently become widely known. Many people would like to learn it. It is not so difficult to do, if you stick to a few important recommendations.

Schedule development

Time management in the modern world is commonly referred to as the ability to effectively manage your own time so as to have time for everything. The basis of any time management is a properly compiled daily routine. A schedule will help you teach yourself to comply with it. If you want to combine efficient work with household chores, leisure and recreation, it is necessary to form a habit:

• Work on the schedule daily.
• Place cases in the right order, taking into account their importance.

You can use a special program or application in which the schedule is in the form of a table. It is recommended to enter a specific case and the date when it should be done.

To develop the ability to effectively manage time, in the early stages, you need to specify not only the day, but also a specific time frame in which a particular task should be performed.

The schedule for each following day should contain information about absolutely all activities, whether it is a morning meal, the way to work, an evening walk with the dog, etc.

All of the above tasks should be characterized as:

• Important and urgent.
• Important non-urgent.
• Unimportant, but urgent.
• Unimportant and non-urgent.

You can use a specific color for each category.

Such classification is called the Eisenhower methodology. It helps:

• Select the most significant tasks from the list.
• Eliminate useless activities that take up a lot of time and attention.

It’s best to save your schedule on your smartphone or tablet and refer to it as the day progresses. In order not to miss something important (a trip to the doctor, a business meeting), you can use the reminder function.

If you work on scheduling daily and do not deviate from the plan, positive changes will not be long in coming. In 5-7 days you will notice that the day is systematized, things are no longer postponed indefinitely, there is free time, which was not enough before.

Such changes will not only increase efficiency, but also bring moral satisfaction. The feeling of constant time pressure, irritability, monotony and meaninglessness of your own actions will go away.

The right motivation

Knowing and getting into the habit of scheduling correctly is only the first stage of effective management. Once it is passed, it will take a lot of effort to train yourself to stick to the schedule.

Often there will be a temptation to exclude or postpone one or another task to another day, explaining it by excessive busyness, fatigue, and other reasons.

To prevent this from happening, you need to find a motivator for action. The best motivator is a goal for which you have to perform specific actions. It should have the clearest possible formulation and a limited time frame.

For example, the desire to lose weight is not a motivator, but a dream that can be put off indefinitely. And the desire to get rid of 5 kg in a month is a clear goal. The approaching cherished date is a great motivation to exercise regularly and not to miss a workout.

To make the path to the goal more meaningful, you can record interim results and achievements. For example, you can write down how many squats were done the day before yesterday, yesterday, today (or how many new foreign words were learned). Visible small successes will strengthen the desire not to quit work halfway and achieve the final result.

Potential difficulties

Self-control and constant motivation are not easy and require patience and effort. The process involves many difficulties.

The first is the desire for self-pity. It will have to be constantly confronted (especially in the first stages). After a busy day at work, you will want to rest, not go to the gym to work out. But you should not give in to such a desire. It is possible to keep the workout a little longer, but you should not cancel it altogether.

The second difficulty that many people are familiar with is maximum concentration on a specific task. To achieve it, it is not necessary to constantly interrupt work, check e-mail, communicate with friends on social networks, talk on the phone. It is necessary to shift all attention to the qualitative performance of a specific action, important at the moment (writing a report, squatting, memorizing foreign words).

It is difficult to achieve one hundred percent concentration at once. To make the task easier, you should break it up into small, gradually increasing segments. For example, learn 8 foreign words today, 12 tomorrow, and 16 the day after tomorrow.

The importance of rest

To think of self-discipline as a constant psychological, physical strain and chasing difficult goals is wrong. Those who think this way cannot learn to manage their own time. Effective time management is not only about concentration, self-discipline and motivation. It is also a full-fledged recreation.

In the pursuit of multiple goals and objectives, there is a risk of overloading the body, disrupting the normal psychological state and moral comfort. To avoid this, you need to learn how to relax. Break a large amount of work into separate stages and take a break after completing each of them. During the break it is forbidden:

• Surfing the Internet sites.
• Calling acquaintances to chat about nothing.
• Spending time on social networks or playing a computer game.

This will cause the brain to fill up with useless information and not be able to focus again on the interrupted important action. For short-term rest is best:

• Look out the window.
• Get up from your desk and walk around the room, the office.

Yoga and various meditative practices have a good relaxing effect. It is recommended to include them periodically in your schedule in order to learn to be calm and control your emotions.

It is important to pay proper attention to sleep. Otherwise it will be impossible to work properly, and health problems will arise in the future.

Work, study, sports training – all of these must alternate with a full day off. They are necessary to restore the energy expended. It is recommended that the days of rest be devoted to activities that evoke positive emotions. This can be a friendly meeting, going to the movies, reading a book, or a walk in the fresh air. A good rest will only increase the desire to achieve difficult goals and set new ones.

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