Time Management Skills
How often do you have a plan for how you are going to spend your day but you aren't able to complete the tasks on your plan because of unimportant tasks, interruptions, or your own procrastination? Wouldn't it be great to be able to manage your schedule and your time while avoiding, or at least controlling, these time stealers? Learn the strategies to manage your schedule while still handling interruptions and demands on your time.
Meaning of Time
What time means to you and how to identify some of the ways in which you can manage it more effectively?
If you wish to become an effective manager of time you must first understand the nature of what you are attempting to manage. Time in this context is not to be defined philosophically. Most simply, it is of finite duration distinct from eternity. The expression 'time' in the English language as well as in other languages is used in different ways. Spend a few minutes writing down some ideas of what the following phrases mean to you:
- At the same time
- On-time
- Time off
- At times
- From time to time
- Timeless
- In no time
- Timely
- In time
A reflection on the above phrases will enable you to focus on the nuances of meaning that underpin their use in actual contexts. You have probably now got a clearer idea of time. Time in fact is an intangible concept or a paradox. You never have enough time but you have all the time that is available. It is a resource, but if you don't use it, it will disappear and you will never be able to catch hold of it, once gone. You can't increase its quantity, but you can ensure that you use it on things that are important to you.
You might have realized that time is a personal concept which means there is no right or wrong perception of time. Learning to manage time requires commitment and depends on how you approach various activities. Your approach will be influenced by the assumption you make about the nature of your work and the environment in which you live and work. Some assumptions will generally be more useful than others for managing your time effectively.
Meaning of Time Management
One of the most essential skills required by an effective manager and every professional relates to managing the time available and prioritize the long term and short-term goals.
Time management is a process of determining the quality and quantity of work output i.e. the effective utilization of time in performing various activities in the organization. Time management is the discipline of organizing, allocating, and controlling the time you use for activities in such a way that you achieve your desired results.
You as an employee have to perform your activities according to your job description. Your important duty is to see that all the activities are performed as per the job description and with the time limit assigned to the job. Time management will help you to perform your job more effectively and efficiently.
The flow of Time is Unidirectional
Like other resources, 'time' is also an important resource that has got a unique character of having a constant unidirectional forward flow. Time passed, cannot be regenerated nor it can be stored to be utilized later on when needed.
Adequate input of all other resources does not necessarily guarantee achievement up to expectation, if during the planning and implementing all possible efforts were not undertaken to complete the various component tasks in targeted time by effectively utilizing the same.
Why Time Management?
Time management is the discipline of organizing, allocating, and controlling the time you use for activities in such a way that you achieve your desired results. Time is a very valuable resource. The first step towards improving time utilization is to determine how available time is spent on different types of activities. Although managers understand that time is their scarcest resource, few actually take time to get a ‘birds-eye’ view of how they actually spend their time and keep a track of how the priorities they say are the most important fit with the actual way they spend their time. It highlights how to control your time so that you can optimize your productivity. Time management helps us to:
- To provide quality time to your responsibilities
- To decrease expenses through work transformation
- To see that all the staff spends their time as per the activities listed in their job description
- To measure the work output and facilitate quality customer focus
Time management is simply a way of using time effectively. Working faster or working longer are poor strategies for managing time. It is more sensible to identify your priorities and then choose the activities accordingly. In fact managing time is about managing yourself. It is about adapting to a given situation so that you can get the most out of your time for you to do this, you must accept that you can influence and ultimately control the environment in which you live and work. You must learn to spend your time wisely.
Related Links
You May Also Like
-
Have you ever noticed how we express ourselves or interact with each other? Have you ever wondered what communication is and what role it plays in our lives? One may wonder if communication is so omnipresent and integral to our lives, why study communication at all? We need to study communication because it is a complex process that consists of many elements and is also beset with a number of barriers and there is a need to remove the barriers so that the communication process is effective.
-
Many different types of teams have been identified by social scientists. Managers may encounter the diverse types of challenges while managing different kinds of teams. Challenges associated with Cross-Functional Teams might be different from that of a Geographically Dispersed Team or a Virtual Team. This article explores some common categories and subtypes of teams.
-
Team Development by Building Trust
As your team begins to work together, you need to establish a way each team member can exchange ideas and build mutual trust. Successful groups are built on trust and collaboration. A free exchange of ideas, in an open environment, will allow your team to get to know each other and enable you to check on how they work together. Learn some tips to help build team trust and establish personal bonds.
-
All the teams are dynamic in nature and they take time to come together, they form, develop, and grow in stages, over a period of time. Teams go through five progressive stages: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing and Adjourning. In this article, we want to introduce you to these stages of team development and certain strategies that you can use to help the team grow and develop in each of these stages.
-
Generating Ideas using SCAMPER
SCAMPER is an activity-based thinking process that can be performed by Cooperative learning. SCAMPER is an acronym that provides a structured way of assisting students to think out of the box and enhance their knowledge. This can be used in the organizational context as a technique for creative problem solving and as a toolkit to generate fresh ideas.
-
Teams are certainly very relevant and important elements in today’s high-performance organization but the important thing to remember as a leader is that we can’t simply rely on putting highly effective individuals together to make a highly effective team. Empowerment increases the effectiveness of the team and drives many intangible benefits both for the organization and the employees.
-
Recognizing Stress & its Sources
As an individual, you almost certainly know what stress feels like. Stressors are events or situations to which people must adjust. Stressors may be physical or psychological in nature. The level of severity of stress is determined not merely by exposure but the intensity, duration, and frequency of stressors. The sources of stress are many. They arise from multiple areas both with the individual and from the environment.
-
Team Foundation in Forming Stage
This is the first stage of team development. This is the stage when the foundation of the team is laid. During the Forming stage, team members have a high dependence on their leader for guidance. Learn the practical strategies you can use during this stage to help your team develop into a highly effective performing team.
-
Team leadership theory is a recent leadership theory that does not discriminate between the leader and the other team members. The approach considers contributions from each team member to be critical for organizational success. This approach focused on the overall team effectiveness and team problems are diagnosed and action is taken to remediate weakness. This approach provides for taking corrective action when the leader deems necessary.
-
How often do you have a plan for how you are going to spend your day but you aren't able to complete the tasks on your plan because of unimportant tasks, interruptions, or your own procrastination? Wouldn't it be great to be able to manage your schedule and your time while avoiding, or at least controlling, these time stealers? Learn the strategies to manage your schedule while still handling interruptions and demands on your time.
