Facebook
Twitter
Yahoo Pingbox
Youtube

Archive for the ‘Time Management’ Category

Why in a hurry?

Friday, March 18th, 2011

It was in the city of Kozhikode (Calicut, Kerela) where I was staying in the Hotel Malabar Palace last month (February, 2011) and the room given to me was on the seventh floor. I were there to conduct my seminars and workshop titled ‘Conquer Yourself’. The window of the room opened to the view of the city. Having my morning glass of milk, as I looked out of the window at the city roads, I noticed everyone is rushing around. Typical of major cities, visitors always ask, “Where is everyone running to?” Actually, the question should be, “Why is everyone in such a hurry?” It’s all about time. She’s late for lunch; he’s going to miss the train or bus home; we’ll be late for dinner. No one ever stops to think about the amount of time wasted worrying about it. The realization that proper planning is the key to saving time has somehow eluded us. It’s important, then, to discuss time management techniques to effectively yield positive results.

Preparation
Make a daily list of things to do, appointments to keep, and so on.

Don’t Be Late
If you have an appointment, leave an hour earlier. Together with traffic delays and phone call interruptions, you’ll have plenty of time to arrive at your destination.

Throw Perfectionism out the Window
If you have an important engagement, wedding or other function to attend; don’t waste so much time over the minor things which will cause you to be late. You know the old saying, “Don’t sweat the small stuff.” It happens to be true. Conversely, if you expect company for the holidays, don’t freak out because your kitchen floor isn’t spotless. No one cares but you. Friends are coming to your home to see you, not the floor.

Don’t Procrastinate
If you’ve started a home project, but you have to pick up a friend at a certain time; drop what you are doing and go. If that doesn’t work, have your friend call you every 15 minutes until you’ve left the house.

Don’t Be Afraid to Say, “Sorry, I Can’t.”
Perhaps you are working on a project at work, and you must leave on time to pick up your children this particular day. Your boss asks if you can stay an extra hour. You feel torn about saying no for fear you may upset your boss. Stop! You are a hard worker; you’re very efficient, and you’ve always been there when your boss needed you. It’s time to think of you. Simply say, “Sorry, I can’t today.”

Time Management Techniques by Suhani Shah

Time Management by Suhani Shah

Time is important to everyone. It is a basic and important component in how we conduct our business; our lives, and even our free time. It should not be wasted nor squandered; but used for preparing our daily routines; our work habits; and our family responsibilities.

Posted in Procrastination, Stress, Time Management | 15 Comments »

Tick Tock Tick Tock… The clock is ticking

Friday, August 27th, 2010

How often do you find yourself procrastinating?  That the project due next week can wait.  That the fun time with your family can wait.  That the visit to your elderly parents can wait.  That the health screening can wait.  That the meal with your best friend can wait.  That your reading can wait.  That your dreams can wait.

Our time on earth is limited.  We do not live forever.  Yet, we seem to forget this and live as if there is always a tomorrow.  We postpone the things we need to do, the time we need to spend with our friends and loved ones as well as our dreams, thinking that time is always on our side.  And we tell ourselves that, one of these fine days, we will find a time to do it.

It is common for students to wait till the last minute before preparing for examination.  It is common for tax payers to file their tax return on the very day of the deadline.  It is not surprising to see passengers arriving at the boarding gate seconds before the gate closes. (By the way, this comes to my mind as I am typing this article sitting at the airport waiting for my flight which has been delayed by an hour) However, the problem is, we do not know when the gate will close on us.  There is no guarantee that we will live up to a ripe age of 80 years old, or for that matter, any age.

Don’t gamble with time.  The clock is ticking, better hurry.  Don’t get busy over things that will not matter at the end of the journey.  Do the things that are close to your heart.  Make time for your loved ones.  If there is something that you have always wanted to do, but have not done so for one reason or another, hesitate no further.  Do it before it’s too late as there will not be a last call for boarding to your next destination.

Posted in Procrastination, Time Management | 4 Comments »

Effective to-do lists – Work Planning

Monday, December 7th, 2009

It is not enough to know what is important and what are the priorities. You also need to know how long it would take to complete a task – how much time you would have to devote to them. Therefore, when preparing your to-do list, add a column where you mention the estimated time each task should take and an adjacent column with the cumulative total.

Then do a simple time study. As you do each task, write down what you did and the start and end times. Keep track for an entire day. Then repeat it a couple weeks later on a different day. It isn’t an exhaustive survey by any measurement, but it will give you some insight. If you work 10 hours a day, you will notice that the important tasks on your list require only four hours which gives you remaining six hours for other tasks. If you feel that much of your day is taken up by interruptions – dealing with events that happened, crises that came up, or problems that had to be solved,  then on average these interruptions consumed four hours a day, you still have six hours a day for the things on your to do list.

Each night, before you leave the office or before you go to bed, update your to do list. Delete the things that you have completed, delegated, or downgraded, add the new things that had come up, rearrange the priorities to get the most important tasks on top, and assign estimated time to each. Then go down the list to the six hour mark and draw a line. That becomes your target for the next day.


Posted in Problem Solving, Procrastination, Time Management | 4 Comments »

Avoid Rounding Off

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

Be it adjusting television volume or counting number of stairs we climb – A common tendency among all of us is being obsessed with round figures. And this becomes especially true when we have to do a particular work.

You decided, for example to start your work at 4:30. However, because you were talking on phone, you realized that you have already passed that time line. What would you do then? Something that all of us would do given this situation – decide to start at 5:00pm instead. You lost 25 precious minutes of your day.

In such cases we lose time even after planning it. We all have a habit to round off the time that we plan. This tendency is really harmful for anyone aspiring to be successful. It’s not important to just know the value of time, its even more important to use it efficiently.

This also applies to the other end. If you had decided to work till 6:00pm you will get up at 6. If your work gets completed say 10 minutes before six, you will get up. But if it demands extra time, you’ll still get up at 6 and plan to do the remainder later. It is not necessary to have round figures all the time, especially when it is wasting your time or making you lazy.

This kind of tendency not only wastes your time, but it also makes you less energetic and enthusiastic towards your job. This deviates you from your goal and destination.  Therefore, be firm on your schedule and abide by the time you fix for your work. Even if it gets a little late, don’t make it too late.

It doesn’t matter you start your work at 8:00 or 8:10, all that matters is YOU START.

“There is never a wrong time to do a right thing”

Posted in Time Management | 9 Comments »

Use the Time

Monday, October 26th, 2009

Imagine you had a bank that credited you with Rs.86, 400 every morning. You would have a freedom to use as much of this money as you like. But there would be just one condition – at the end of the day, whatever balance is left will simply be taken away. What would u do in such a case? Obviously make full use of all the money.

Sadly, most of us don’t realize that this is what we must do with time. Every day has 86,400 seconds that you can use as you like. An ordinary, common person tends to waste most of the time he has for unimportant things. For achieving one must learn time management. In one word, time management is prioritizing.

All the things that you do in the day can be divided into categories on basis of urgency and importance. The four categories thus derived would be.

Urgent and Important: Jobs which are really close to deadlines – like submissions of projects, test preparations – you have no choice but to do these important things.

Urgent but not important: Any task that you HAVE to do, though not important because if you don’t do it now, the time to do will be gone. Like answering a door bell.

Not urgent but important: Tasks that are to be done by some distant deadline, like doing a project by the end of vacations.

Neither Urgent nor Important: Watching TV, Computer games, chatting on phone and any other tasks that you tend to do just for passing your time.

The essence of time management lies in devoting maximum time to the not urgent but important task are handle! One should understand and importance of work and remember to allocate time last to the neither Urgent nor Important category.

So now immediately make a list of all the things that you do in the normal course of the day and classify them in these different categories. Now you know where to give time to!

Posted in Time Management | 12 Comments »