What Is Time Management?

Most people increasingly notice the fact that the load of personal affairs and work is so great that they simply do not know how to do it all. From the eternal lack of time, a person has a bad mood, lethargy, discomfort and lack of desire to do anything at all. To avoid this, you simply need to do one important thing is to learn to plan your time competently.

Its main task is to achieve more per unit of time and to efficiently spend its own resources. That is, we are talking about conditional control over time, allowing you to activate your productivity in such a way as to get the desired result “on time” or for a shorter period.

Time Management Systems: Main Principles

Time management systems are based on four basic principles:

  1. the ability to work with goals;
  2. the distribution of priorities;
  3. knowledge of planning tools;
  4. the development of habits.

The aim should be real, concrete, measurable and have a deadline. If the purpose does not have one of these parameters, then it ceases to be the target.

The assortment of planning tools is wide and diverse; the main thing is to choose the most convenient one for them. It can be a record in the diary or calendar, a specially drawn up plan of affairs for a certain period of time, which must constantly be updated with new objectives. Habits are an indicator that the art of time management is mastered. To develop this habit, you need to know the basic rules of time management.

Work at certain hours. Each person has his/her own personal biorhythms. And if you watch some time for your body, you can determine the time for which the peak of activity falls. It is at this time that you can and should work with full efficiency. Thus, you can do a lot of planned things in a short period of time.

Filtering information is necessary in order not to overload your brain, and therefore not to spend your time on it. To do this, you need to learn how to study texts, looking briefly at the context only what is really needed.

Learn to say NO. If some cases or people are not included in the plan of your urgent business, it is better for them to say “NO” immediately. Use the “anxiety restraint method,” coined by D. Carnegie. It consists that on acceptance of not too important decision you should spend exactly so much time, how many have planned.

Rules of Time Management: Eisenhower Method and Pareto Analysis

For proper allocation of priorities, one can use the Eisenhower matrix. Scientist divided all the cases into four groups:

  1. Priority tasks. They are urgent and important. Violation of the deadlines for their implementation can seriously harm you;
  2. Important, but not urgent. They could be postponed. But if such practice is constant, then cases “desert” in the first category. So you need to be careful;
  3. Urgent, but not important. Such tasks are not relevant to your personal success in achieving important goals but take time. Therefore, whenever possible, it is better to delegate such cases to others;
  4. Not urgent and not important aims. They do not have consequences for their non-fulfillment. Therefore, such objectives could be ignored.

The Italian economist W. Pareto also found that the distribution of resources is subject to the law of 80 to 20. That is, 20% of people owned 80% of all resources, while the remaining 80% owned the remaining 20%. Pareto's disciples and his followers applied this principle to other spheres of life and found out that there it also works well. For example, 20% of the subjects that we study bring us than 80% of the benefits. Only 20% of our efforts bring 80% of the money. Similarly, 20% of the tasks that we perform bring us 80% of the result.

Therefore, first of all, it is necessary to concentrate our efforts on the very 20% tasks that can bring us 80% of the outcome. People who do not know Pareto analysis often spend most of their time doing small things that are of little use. It is necessary to make a list of priority tasks, the fulfillment of which will bring you the maximum result. As practice shows, it is better to begin to carry out the most complex cases. Do not postpone unpleasant things until later.

Plan matters in advance. If you first spend at least 10% of the time planning cases before starting their implementation, this will save 90% of the time in the implementation period. Planning your affairs, you need from the greater to the smaller, move from long-term to short-term. A difficult task is easier to break into several smaller ones.

Analyzing the day, use the five-finger method:

  1. Ask yourself a question: did I do anything to improve my health?
  2. Have you helped anything with your loved ones?
  3. Assess your emotional state.
  4. What steps did you take to achieve the result?
  5. Did you learn anything valuable? Or, maybe you have an idea?

Thus, effective time management is not a panacea for dissatisfaction with life. This is just a way of organizing time. It will help to accelerate the achievement of the set goals, develop multitasking time management skills, planning, to activate the internal potential, to free time for cases for which “there was never time.” All the rest is your efforts and understanding of why you are doing this.