Time management is the method of organizing our tasks so as to effectively utilize our time. Time management is a key skill. Effective time management creates healthy work life balance.
When we fail to manage our time well, our productivity declines and stress increases.
Principles for Effective Time Management
Planning
Planning is the most important principle of time management. If you don’t have plan for your task, you will be wondering what you should be working and loose efficiency.
Having a plan helps you to easily get started on a task, complete it and move on to the next task quickly.
Prioritize
Former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower said in a speech ” “I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.”
The ability to distinguish between Urgent and Important is a skill needed for effectively prioritizing tasks.
Urgent tasks are tasks that have an immediate deadline, these tasks are not necessarily important and time consuming, it is also not necessary that these task add any value to our life.
However important task may not have an immediate deadline, but they have a significant positive impact on our life.
The problem is that most of us let this urgent task dominate our life. What we should be doing is to focus on what is most important for us regardless of its urgency. By focusing on the tasks which
are important for us we will get more control over our time.
Avoid Multitasking
When trying to achieve more we all try to do multiple tasks at the same time and ended up achieving almost nothing. People who try to multitask are never really focused on any single task, they
are bound to make more mistakes and are more stressed because of less productivity.
Research has shown that when we work on a single task at a time we are more focused, more creative and less stressed. By practicing a single task you will be able to get a job done quickly, correctly and efficiently.