Good time management is an essential skill every success-minded person must acquire. How well do you manage time? It may interest you to know that how well you manage time determines your impact in any space you are operating in. Time is of great essence in life. It is one invaluable asset that is instrumental to success. It is too precious to be wasted. So a good time management skill seeks to eliminate time wastage to the barest minimum. Time is what life is made up of and when we waste time we are wasting our life.
If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of – Bruce Lee.
Interestingly, you can always leverage time, riding on its wings to the realm of success. How well do you manage time? Your answer to this fundamental question is a clue as to whether you are successful or not. So, I want to reiterate here that time management is one of the determinants of success. Good time management is a very important habit we must all cultivate whereas poor time management is one bad habit we must get rid of. If it is not taken care of could eventually lead to a life of failure and unfulfillment in the long run. For us to understand time management we must understand three attributes of time;
- Time controls and regulates all the activities of man. Time determines every event and occurrence in life.
- Time is no respecter of a person, every one of us under the sun has an equal number of time, 24 hours in a day.
- Time is irreversible, once mismanaged it cannot be reversed or regained. No one can turn back the hand of time.
These attributes are reasons why we must manage time well. However, to evaluate your time management skill you must possess these five essential habits. These are five sterling qualities of highly fulfilled persons
Have a blueprint
A blueprint is like a road map to guide you in accomplishing your set objectives. A blueprint helps you to be organized in any project. Having a blueprint for every project is one of the surest ways to achieve set goals. It helps you to manage time well by allotting time to all your activities. A blueprint also helps us to carefully plan out our activities as it helps us to prioritize our activities. Hence, without a blueprint, your day will be a boring, dull, disorganized, and disjointed venture. Plan your life, and have a blueprint for each day. What is your blueprint for today?
Prioritize your activities
By prioritizing, I mean itemizing your ‘to dos’ or activities for the day, week, or month according to their order of importance. Ask yourself, what are those tasks that are very important to me? List them down; let them come first in the order of preference. You need to allot more time to very important ones.
On a scale of one to ten (1-10), what are the ten most important goals you want to achieve? Write them down according to their importance, starting with the most important ones. The idea is prioritizing your activities will enable you to give more time to your most important tasks. It will help you stay focused and improve your time management skill.
Stay Focused
It would help if you stayed focused to improve your time management skills. If you are not focused then you are distracted. Distraction aborts dreams and truncates destinies. Distraction is a loss of focus and it can lead to poor time management. It is all about losing focus on your priorities. Note that you must focus on your priorities, not on your trivialities. You cannot manage your time well when you focus on trivial issues. So don’t be engrossed in trivialities to the extent that you will neglect your priorities.
For instance, if your study is more important to you don’t use the time for your studies to watch movies. Or if you have an appointment to keep don’t postpone it because you want to entertain visitors. These are all distractions. And whatsoever is not part of your blueprint is not a priority but a distraction.
Do not procrastinate.
Never put off for tomorrow, what you can do today – Thomas Jefferson
Procrastination is the avoidance of doing a task that needs to be accomplished. In other words, procrastination is the deferment of responsibilities for no tangible reasons. One universal attribute of procrastination is that it can take place in any area of an individual’s life. Procrastination is the thief of time. It robs us of our precious time. The truth is that if we keep on deferring tasks time will come when we will find it difficult to achieve our goals and we cannot beat the dateline because of pressures. And you cannot manage time well with this attitude of procrastination.
Invest in time
Your time management skill is also measured by what you have achieved within a certain time frame. The extent to which you are able to invest determines how productive and secured your life will become over time. Investment empowers you to take charge of your future. Such a time is a time to sow expecting to reap in the future. A farmer through seed planting is investing his seed (lings) for a bumper harvest in the nearest future. If he or she refuses to sow during the planting season then he will have nothing to reap and the entire season would have been wasted. Don’t waste your time, manage it well by investing your time in something worthwhile. Invest in your health, self-development, education, and business projects, and acquire specialized skills that will help you find fulfillment in life.
Benefits of time management
The way you manage time will determine whether you will be successful or not. There is time for every activity, so good time management entails doing the right thing at the right time. It also entails the speedy execution of projects when opportunities come. There are so many competitors lurking around to take advantage of your ineptitude if, and when you fail to deliver. Speedy response to these opportunities as they beckon with time is a veritable asset you must subscribe to.
Develop a culture of good time management. You must sharpen your time management skill. Time management skill helps us to work smart by bringing to bear our efficiency and organizational skills. It helps us meet the dateline of projects and to achieve our set goals and objectives. In other words, it enhances performance and productivity. Moreover, it helps in capacity-building as one becomes better in a specialized area over time. It is often said that time is money; hence, time management will help us to minimize waste and increase our net worth.
Final Note
What are you doing with your time today? Manage your time well because time will tell whether you will succeed and find fulfillment in life, or not. Remember, time determines every event in life; time is no respecter of any individual; and you cannot turn back the hand of time. Utilize your time well if you want fulfillment in life. Be wise.