Personal Time Management: Learn How to Use Your Time Effectively

If you live or work in one of the busiest cities in the world like New York City, you will see people who are walking purposefully fast towards their destination.  It seems like time is always of the essence, every minute counts, and everyone is always in a rush.

When you see a person who is rushing off somewhere, there are two possible scenarios. First, that individual could be rushing off because of being late ? or second, it could be because that person wants to have plenty of time to arrive to that destination.

If you want to be the type of person who can have that luxury to get to an appointment with plenty of time to spare, rather than always rushing off due to lateness, then you need to learn how to use your time effectively.  This is where personal time management comes in.

What is Personal Time Management?

First, here is a quick definition of personal time management. This term refers to the efficient and effective use of your personal time ? to meet your professional and personal goals. 

Take your typical workday as an example.  On the start of a workweek, do you usually put off creating difficult reports until later in the week, or do you deal with them immediately? When the deadline for a project nears, do you find yourself dealing with more work than you can handle or are you always right on schedule?

Your answers to these questions would be a reflection of whether you are applying the basic rules of personal time management or not. One of the rules that you need to learn about in personal time management is learning how to prioritize.

When working on a project, you need to deal with the difficult tasks first ? so that you will have plenty of time later to revise or make any adjustments on it. Knowing which issues to deal with first, and setting your long-term and short-term goals is part of effective personal time management.

Advantages of Effective Personal Time Management

With effective time management, these are the benefits that you will get to enjoy:
?    You can eliminate unnecessary activities which take up your time through prioritization.
?    You will have a regular workload each day, rather than dealing with a multitude of tasks all at one time.
?    You can monitor your work?s progress.
?    You will have more leisure or personal time.
?    You can plan your day, week and month more efficiently.
Additional Effective Time Management Tips

Remember that procrastination is the worst enemy of effective time management.  By putting things off, your work will only pile up, giving you a heavier load than usual. 

If a particular task proves to be more difficult than you think, you may not have enough time to work on it and you will not be able to meet the deadlines set by your superiors, or the deadlines that you have set for yourself.

The key to ensuring that you are effectively managing your time is to organize things.  Create a to-do list, in order of priority so that you can accomplish one task at a time, rather than dealing with a lot of things at one time and accomplishing nothing.

All in all, personal time management will allow you to use your time effectively, and easily meet both your short-term and long-term goals.

The Benefits Of Personal Time Management

Time management is basically about being focused. The Pareto Principle, also known as the ’80:20 Rule’, states that 80% of efforts that are not time managed or unfocused generates only 20% of the desired output.

However, 80% of the desired output can be generated using only 20% of a well time managed effort.

Although the ratio ’80:20′ is only arbitrary, it is used to put emphasis on how much is lost or gained.

Some people view time management as a list of rules that involves scheduling of appointments, goal settings, thorough planning, creating to do lists and prioritizing.

These are the core basics of managing your time that should be understood to develop an efficient personal management skill. These basic skills can be fine tuned further to include the finer points of each skill that can give you that extra reserve to make the results you desire.

But there are more skills involved than just the core basics. Skills such as decision making, inherent abilities such as emotional intelligence and critical thinking are also essential to your personal growth.

Personal management involves everything you do. No matter how big or how small, everything counts.

Every new piece of knowledge you acquire, each new bit of advice you consider, each new skill you develop should be taken into consideration.

Having a balanced life-style should be the primary goal in maintaining your time management. This is the main aspect that many practitioners of personal time management fail to grasp.

Managing your time is about getting results, not about being busy.

The six areas that will be improved in anyone’s life are physical, intellectual, social, career, emotional and spiritual.

The physical aspect involves having a healthy body, less stress and fatigue.

The intellectual aspect involves learning and other mental growth activities.

The social aspect involves developing personal or intimate relations and being an active contributor to society.

The career aspect involves school and work.

The emotional aspect involves appropriate feelings and desires and manifesting them.

The spiritual aspect involves a personal quest for meaning.

Thoroughly planning and having a set of things to do for each of the key areas may not be very practical, but determining which area in your life is not being giving enough attention is part of managing your time.

Each area creates the whole you, if you are ignoring one area then you are ignoring an important part of yourself.

It also should not be so daunting a task. It is a very sensible and reasonable approach in solving problems big or small.

A great way of learning to manage your time and improving your personal life is to follow several basic activities.

One of them is to review your goals, whether it be immediate or long-term goals, often.

A way to do this is to keep a list that is always accessible to you.

Always determine which task is necessary or not necessary in achieving your goals and which activities are helping you maintain a balanced life style.

Each and every one of us has a peek time and a time when we slow down, these are our natural cycles. We should be able to distinguish that its time to do the difficult tasks when we are the sharpest.

Learn to say “No”. You actually see this advice often. Heed it even if it involves saying the word to family or friends.

Pat yourself at the back or just reward yourself in any manner for an effective result.

Try and get the cooperation from people around you who are actually benefiting from your efforts.

Don’t procrastinate. Attend to necessary things immediately. Make the main thing, the main thing!

Have a positive attitude and set yourself up for success. But be realistic in your approach in achieving your goals.

Have a record or journal of all your activities. This will help you get things in their proper perspective.

These are the few steps you initially take in becoming a well rounded individual. Personal time management is the art and science of building a better life.

From the moment you the integrate skills used to manage your time into your life, you have opened several options that can provide a broad spectrum of solutions to your personal growth and create more doors for opportunities to knock upon.

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How To Use Time Management For Personal Growth

Time management is basically about being focused. The Pareto Principle also known as the ’80:20 Rule’ states that 80% of efforts that are not time managed or unfocused generates only 20% of the desired output. However, 80% of the desired output can be generated using only 20% of a well time managed effort. Although the ratio ’80:20′ is only arbitrary, it is used to put emphasis on how much is lost or how much can be gained with time management.

Some people view time management as a list of rules that involves scheduling of appointments, goal settings, thorough planning, creating things to do lists and prioritizing. These are the core basics of time management that should be understood to develop an efficient personal time management skill. These basic skills can be fine tuned further to include the finer points of each skill that can give you that extra reserve to make the results you desire.

But there is more skills involved in time management than the core basics. Skills such as decision making, inherent abilities such as emotional intelligence and critical thinking are also essential to your personal growth.

Personal time management involves everything you do. No matter how big and no matter how small, everything counts. Each bit of knowledge you acquire, each bit of advice you consider, each new skill you develop should be taken into consideration.

Having a balanced life-style should be the key result in having personal time management. This is the main aspect that many practitioners of personal time management fail to grasp.

Time management is about getting results, not about being busy.

The six areas that personal time management seeks to improve in anyone’s life are physical, intellectual, social, career, emotional and spiritual.

The physical aspect involves having a healthy body, less stress and fatigue.

The intellectual aspect involves learning and other mental growth activities.

The social aspect involves developing personal or intimate relations and being an active contributor to society.

The career aspect involves school and work.

The emotional aspect involves appropriate feelings and desires and manifesting them.

The spiritual aspect involves a personal quest for meaning.

Thoroughly planning and having a set of things to do list for each of the key areas may not be very practical, but determining which area in your life is not being giving enough attention is part of time management. Each area creates the whole you, if you are ignoring one area then you are ignoring an important part of yourself.

Personal time management should not be so daunting a task. It is a very sensible and reasonable approach in solving problems big or small.

A great way of learning time management and improving your personal life is to follow several basic activities.

One of them is to review your goals whether it be immediate or long-term goals often.

A way to do this is to keep a list that is always accessible to you.

Always determine which task is necessary or not necessary in achieving your goals and which activities are helping you maintain a balanced life style.

Each and everyone of us has a peek time and a time when we slow down, these are our natural cycles. We should be able to tell when to do the difficult tasks when we are the sharpest.

Learning to say “No”. You actually see this advice often. Heed it even if it involves saying the word to family or friends.

Pat yourself at the back or just reward yourself in any manner for an effective time management result.

Try and get the cooperation from people around you who are actually benefiting from your efforts of time management.

Don’t procrastinate. Attend to necessary things immediately.

Have a positive attitude and set yourself up for success. But be realistic in your approach in achieving your goals.

Have a record or journal of all your activities. This will help you get things in their proper perspective.

These are the few steps you initially take in becoming a well rounded individual.

As the say personal time management is the art and science of building a better life.

From the moment you integrate into your life time management skills, you have opened several options that can provide a broad spectrum of solutions to your personal growth. It also creates more doors for opportunities to knock on.

Encouraging Better Time Management ? Link Behaviors to Personal Work Goals

You have decided that your employees could benefit from better time management. Specifically, you want them to do better at managing interruptions, prioritizing tasks, planning activities, and meeting deadlines. 

You did all the right things.  You sent everyone to time management class, showed videos on time management, and bought the latest TIPS books on managing time.  You even emailed your employees several websites that contained some great ideas.  Still, you have seen very few changes. Or if changes do occur, they are temporary.

So how do you encourage improvements, especially the long lasting kind? Try linking the time management improvements you want to your employees’ personal work goals. For example, suppose you wanted employees to do better at prioritizing tasks.  You might explain how prioritizing tasks could lead to achievement of the following personal work goals:

• Increased personal productivity

• Increased personal quality

• Less need to work overtime

• Less personal frustration and stress

• More time available to take a full lunch

• Less time spent on the telephone explaining delays to customers

Don’t fret if you don’t see your employees’ personal work goals on this list.  You will have an endless list of personal work goals to choose from if your employees are not doing a good job of managing their time.  That’s because if they are not managing their time well, they are probably complaining. Use these complaints (or goals) to explain the personal benefits of better time management.

What makes this approach more effective than classes and videos?

This approach is more effective because you create a heightened sense of the value and urgency around better time management.  You also approach improvements with a focus on personal benefits to employees.  Finally, and most importantly, this is not a one time strategy for improving time management.  This is something you can use whenever you talk to employees.  So the next time your employees wistfully talk about how they would love to take a longer lunch, improve their quality, or have less stress, link these goals to a specific time management behavior you want.

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Stop Procrastinating by Understanding Your Personal Procrastination Style

Procrastinating is a very common problem in our society today. It seems to be more of a problem especially in the workplace. There are many factors that play a part in procrastination and why humans do it.

So how do we stop procrastinating?

We need to realize that we are doing it in the first place. Human nature allows us to do things and then disguise them as other issues. We tend to make excuses for our bad habits and usually end up blaming them onto other things or people. So the first step in learning to stop procrastinating is to identify that we are procrastinating.

So what exactly is procrastination? Procrastination is when a person literally avoids doing a task that they know they should be doing. It could be any task, from making a simple phone call to someone, or losing weight, to more important issues such as finishing a duty in the workplace that may cause you to lose your job if it isn’t completed.

Procrastination is a bad habit that usually has bad end results from doing it. If this sounds familiar, then it may be time for you to learn to stop procrastinating.

Why do People procrastinate? There are many, many reasons why we do it. A Study at a prominent University showed that 90% of the college students enrolled there were guilty of procrastination. The dropout rate of students that procrastinate is high, as well.

The reasons range from many different problems, however, Laziness is not one of them. We tend to think that people who procrastinate are lazy and that is just not the case. There is usually an underlying problem.

One of the most common reasons why people procrastinate is perfectionism. These people are so afraid of making a mistake that they avoid doing the task at all. Their way of thinking is that if they don’t do it, they won’t have to face any mistake that they have made.

Fear is another reason why people procrastinate. If someone is put outside their comfort zone, they avoid it. An example of this would be asking someone to write a speech to give in front of a group of people.

If this person is afraid of speaking in front of people, then they will more than likely put off writing a speech until the last minute. Little do they realize that it makes them feel unprepared and doesn’t probably go as smooth as they would like it to.

Another common reason why we procrastinate is out of anger. If someone is forced into doing something that they do not want to do, they rebel by avoiding the issue. This is so common during the teen years. The task is usually poorly done, if done at all.

So to stop procrastinating we must first set goals in our lives. We need to figure out what it is that we want to achieve, and then make a list of goals. They need to be realistic goals that we can achieve. If we set them too high we are setting ourselves up for a disaster.

After we set our goals we need to commit to doing them. That is the hard part, but if we can understand that we are procrastinating and why, it will be much easier to learn to stop procrastinating.

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