Perhaps on of the biggest weakness I have is poor time management, it is something I have tried to control and work on but nothing seems to happen, maybe I just don’t work hard enough on it. I am not one of those people who is always late for everything, I am always early for all the ‘important’ stuff in life ( not to say the things I’m usually late for are not important) but for example work, class, meetings, I always try my best to keep time and 9 times out of 10 I am usually early, my biggest challenge comes when it comes to meeting friends, doing things on my own and having to be somewhere on time where I am going using my own initiative. I think what usually ends up delaying me is that I am sometimes a huge procrastinator, you know that feeling, you set your mind to get down to books and read, decide exactly which subject your going to read, neatly arrange your books on the table, get your pens ready….your highlighters…then you think ‘hmmm, let me make a cup of tea’ and you go ahead and do it, come back to you table, think,well…Lemi just check Facebook and twitter…and hour later your back in the kitchen ramaging through the fridge (which you know very well has no food) or making another cup of tea, by the end of the night a few hours have passed and you have got no where with your reading because you have been procrastinating!!!
To help me ‘combat’ my time management skills I decided to attend a session ‘Organising yourself and your time’ which proved to be really useful to me so thought I would share it here for anyone who may be having some difficulties organising their time.
Failure to use time effectively leads to missed deadlines, wasted opportunities, frustration and stress
1. Know what your time stealers are
Time stealers are all the activities you do that really do not help you and only move you further away from your goal. This could be anything, gaming, social networking sites etc. A good way to help your self through this is to limit the number of times you access these sites. Give yourself a specific time limit as to how long you will be on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube etc and ensure you stick to that. Also avoid checking your emails 200 times a day, limit yourself to checking your emails to three times a day, morning, lunch and evening. Unless that is ofcourse you are working and its part of your job to check your emails 200 times a day 
2. Plan your day in advance
Any smart phone can really help you with this, most of them have reminders which you can sync with your email calendars and can help you manage all you have to do in one place, your work, school, social etc. and the great thing about it is that it reminds you specifically when you tell it to so you do not have to worry about writing something down and then forgetting to do it because you forgot to look at the diary(it happens!) A great practise is to plan your day ahead,i.e every morning or last thing before you go to bed, whichever suits you better, you could sort out your activities for the day and remind yourself what you have booked to do.
For those who like the more traditional route, you can invest in a good diary that helps you jot down all the things you have to do and the great thing about this is that you can instantly know your schedule by looking at a particular date, just don’t lose the diary,otherwise its pointless!
3. Set your Goals
I think this may have come as one of the first points. It is important to know what your goals are in life, if you do not know where you are going, all roads will lead you there..The tragedy of life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goals to reach….Without goals, and plans to reach them, you are like a ship that has set sail with no destination.. I could go on but I’m sure you get the point, basically goals are dreams with deadlines (I just had to!).
Set your goals to know where you are going, jot the down somewhere, stick them on your wall planner if you have to and determine what you need to do to achieve those goals. When I went for the seminar we each had to name our goals for the next 5 years, which can be daunting in a room full of strangers but it helped make the goals more realistic in each of our minds.
4. Create a schedule and stick to it
I think this is very self-explanatory. If you want to better manage your time, know what you have to do and when and strive to be there on time, and finish things on time as well, be it school work, assignments or work related activities. Never wait until the last minute to start working on something while cheating yourself that you work best while under pressure, this is a lie and it just means you are a procrastinator. I can bet you the work you hurriedly do at 2 a.m the morning before the deadline will not be half as good as work which was done in plenty of time before. You have time to check for silly mistakes and proof read your work.
These are just some of the few tips I can share presently on managing your time i hope it was of some help. If you are not sure how bad..or good you are at managing your time, maybe you can self evaluate yourself using this.
Related articles
- I’ll Get To It Later: Why People Procrastinate (mint.com)
- Time Management: My Tips (asksolutionshrservices.wordpress.com)
- What Type Of Procrastinator Are You? (umass.uloop.com)
I’m very much in the same boat, where even with the best intentions for the day sometimes it can be lost doing activities that suck away my time! I’ve found a lot of value in planning my day out in advance like you mention. When you can clearly see a list of goals to structure the day and keep you on track, you’re more likely to stick to it.
Yes that’s true, when you clearly know what you need to do during your day, the higher chances you will end up accomplishing everything, otherwise when you don’t you can be easily swayed to do other things. Glad to see I’m not alone
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