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
-
Effective Business Communication
Communication is all about getting the message across correctly. To make this happen, you need to have good speaking skills and good writing skills. If you have these skills coupled with good listening skills and interest in reading, you have all the potential to be a good communicator. What things should the leader take into consideration to be more effective with interpersonal communication?
-
Many people think communication is easy. It is said that communication can never be a hundred percent complete. Many factors are involved in the process of communication and something can always go wrong with one or more of these. It becomes difficult and complex when we put barriers in communication. Recognize barriers to interpersonal communication and examine specific strategies for overcoming those barriers.
-
Charisma is a certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men. Charismatic Leader gathers followers, through dint of personality and charm. Understand the meaning and concept of Charismatic Leadership and the qualities of a charismatic leader. Gain an understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of using charismatic leadership. Finally, explore the difference between charismatic and transformational leadership.
-
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.
-
Benefits of Teams in Workplace
The use of formal work teams is commonplace in modern organizations. But why we have teams? What are the benefits or advantages that teams provide for organizations and employees? Do we really need to adopt formal team structures and use team-building approaches in organizations? Read this article to explore and learn the benefits of having formal teams in organizations.
-
Appreciative leaders encourage contributions from those around them and facilitate the discussion to mutually solve problems. Understand the concept of Appreciative Leadership and learn about tools to create and ask powerful questions - that lead to new discoveries and possibilities. Instead of focusing on what’s wrong in the workplace, learn about, and build upon what works. Learn in this article the art to apply appreciative inquiry to specific situations and challenges at your workplace.
-
Building Perfect Creative Team
One misconception around creativity is that creative act is essentially solitary. Most of the world's important inventions resulted not from the work of one lone genius, but from collaboration of a team with complementary skills. Managers should build teams with the ideal mix of traits to form a creative group and then establish the conditions that make creativity much more likely to occur.
-
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.
-
Tools for Developing Your Team
If a manager has too many weak spots in the talent of the team, the ability to empower the team members to independently execute the project is impaired. Assignments fall behind schedule or stretch out because the needed skills or knowledge are not in place when needed. To successfully execute important projects, hiring talented people, and increasing the talents of existing staff are most important.
-
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.
