What is time management?

What is time management

Have you ever wondered why someone can work 4-5 hours a day and get the most out of it, and someone doesn’t have enough 8 hours to complete basic tasks?

It is not about the length of the working day, the degree of tension or working conditions. The main issue is the ability to organize own time so that you can do more, getting the most out of it and leaving enough free time. Speaking in the language of modern terms, everything is decided by time management — managing one’s own time, using one’s life with maximum efficiency. And we are talking not only about working hours, but also about matters related to other areas of your life.

In this article, we will analyze the basics of building personal time management, talking about its basic components and rules of operation. Make yourself comfortable - you are about to dive into the amazing art of managing your own life.

Why is it needed?

Two millennia ago, one ancient Roman philosopher, pondering the question “How to evaluate the effectiveness of your lived years?”, laid the foundations of time management as we know it. It was Seneca with his famous idea of dividing lived time into bad and good(in our language - wasted and effectively used). Along with this, in his opinion, it would be worthwhile to keep track of hours, that have passed, and at least once a year to sum up the lived life period. Thoughts of the philosopher, it would seem, are good, but were forgotten for almost 19 centuries. And only in the 19th century. the era of industrialization felt with renewed force the lack of a system for control time spent on work. Mainly, this issue affected the owners of large companies and factories, which it was necessary to monitor the time and efficiency of the employees. In the same period, a new idea appeared — the “80/20” principle, which was put forward by Vilfredo Pareto. If you’re not familiar with this principle, here’s the quick gist: 20% of effective actions bring results 80% of the result, and vice versa, 80% of ineffective efforts give only 20% of the result.

What is time management nowadays? This is a system of actions, the purpose of which is the correct planning of tasks with competent distribution time to complete each. The main goal of time management is to do as much as possible, minimizing time costs and reducing costs a person’s stress level.

That is, time management is not only a fashionable word from the circle of managers, which they use to describe the conditions for achieving their success. Also, this is far from a secret technology and not a panacea for wasted time. Time management as a system is effective a tool that can help every working person make their working time as efficient as possible, leaving strength and free hours for recreation and hobbies.

The idea of effective time management is so fascinating to many modern people that they have even begun to create departments around the world of time management at universities. Not to mention the large number of books, webinars, courses and manuals. There are so many tips on how to manage your time with the help of time management that it seems that a person does not have there was no chance of procrastination. You just need to learn to implement all this in your own life. Intrigued? Let’s find out together how this is possible.

Time management as a system: what it is based on and how the technology of own time management works

Each system has its own key blocks and rules of operation. Time management, as a practice of managing one’s own time, also has basic components that must work in an integrated way. These are:

• planning and setting goals;
• arrangement of priorities and deadlines for each task;
• analysis of the costs of time resources;
• making lists;
• self-organization and delegation;
• elimination of redundant tasks.

Practice shows that this system works not only in the field of business or to increase personal efficiency, but also shows excellent results in everyday life.

And now let’s “walk” through the basic rules of time management, which describe its previously mentioned components. It is best to take these rules are from the advice of people who are considered the “guru” of mastery of managing their time all over the world. For example, us interested Brian Tracy - an expert on personal effectiveness, who has already spoken all over the world with lectures on personal time management and the art of managing one’s own life. Here are the most important rules of time management he calls:

Choose the most valuable

Since time is a resource that we cannot increase in any way, it should be spent only on the most valuable and significant things. You can determine them by dividing the entire list of future cases into 4 categories:

1) important and urgent are cases that require the fastest possible completion at any cost, because they drag with enormous consequences for the future;

2) important, but not urgent — a category of cases that are mainly focused on future returns. For example, playing sports, time with loved ones, hobbies and studies;

3) urgent, but not important — this is a category of all kinds of life “facaps”: something broke or broke somewhere — it needs to be fixed,someone misunderstood something - you need to explain it again. That is, these are matters that need to be resolved now, because it will be better that way, but they are not of great significance for life;

4) unimportant and non-urgent - things that are not important at all, but sometimes you want to spend time on them. These include gossiping with friends, surfing the Internet, watching TV series.

In conclusion, the main advice: focus maximum attention on the “important but not urgent” categories and then the first category will be appear extremely rarely. It is obvious that it is better to completely abandon the fourth category (not important and not urgent) — this just a “time eater”.

Think and act correctly

Have you heard of such a law of the universe that if you want something badly and behave as if it has already come true, then everything will definitely come true? Here is the same situation with time management: think and behave as if you have already mastered this art. That is, perceive and position yourself as an efficient and punctual person, take an example from such. Tracy suggests an interesting technique: imagine that every moment of your life is captured on camera. You need to act and act as if every minute counts, whether you will get your dream job or achieve personal success.

Set yourself the right goals

It is very important to brainstorm and give an honest answer to the question “What do you want to achieve in life?”. In this way, it will be possible to form the most important goals for yourself, among which the tasks with the highest priority will be determined. Get yourself one the habit of doing important things in the morning. In the language of time management, this is called “eating frogs”.

The same goes for important meetings. The time before them is usually filled with anxiety and depressing thoughts. More effective and it will be calmer for you to schedule such meetings in the morning. As they say, they “shot themselves off” and can continue to work.

Give up multitasking

Doing several things at the same time is rarely successful. For example, it may seem to you that correspondence in Telegram does not interfere with simultaneous work on the project. In fact, it is a harmful occupation. The brain does not work in parallel mode, he constantly switches between tasks and is simply exhausted at the end of the day. The best solution is to practice alone one thing, without being distracted by trifles.

Plan everything, absolutely everything

Planning is the foundation of time management, and the best tool is to-do lists. Try it yourself: write a to-do list by hand per day, start with the most difficult, cross off each completed one from the list. As a result, you will feel much lighter, and your efficiency will increase by at least 30%. If some tasks seem too big and impossible to you, distribute them them in small and gradual steps. You will be surprised, but in this way any task is really feasible.

And the last principle is to throw the garbage out of your life. It means giving up things, people and activities that are thoughtless eating up your time. Instead of empty gossip with colleagues during a break, it is better to drink a cup of tea and rest in peace. By the way, timely and regular rest is also an important part of time management. This is not a waste of time, but an investment in own capacity. Working to wear and tear is harmful and inefficient, regular breaks and healthy sleep are your guarantee efficiency.