Understanding time management in a different light!
It’s almost impeccable as to how soon we run out of time, it could only be yesterday when our parents were changing our nappies and giving us baths when we suddenly turn 19 and run off to college in a strange, almost hysterical hippy-like world where the little kid who went to school and ran off to the playground as soon as they stepped back is suddenly bombarded with a whole different culture of raves, substance influences like drugs, alcohol and almost no privacy and time to ourselves. In such a dynamic setting, how does one learn to effectively manage time? Let’s uncover that this time around.
If I talk about myself, well my journey with time management has been quite similar to most people, I’ve always wanted to do so much and had almost little or no time to do, which would most times start with procrastinating for assignments and projects, having a big mental breakdown one day before their submission and then hastily coming up with anything which would bring me an above average grade, and finally consoling myself with the fact that I was able to pull it off. But some of the longer-term repercussions that I was able to recognize a while back ago were,
I was never able to give my 100% time, effort, and energy and thus, almost did not know how capable was I of achieving, or exactly what was I capable of achieving
I became boastful and almost took pride in the fact that I was always able to pull off things at the last minute, and hence always ended up procrastinating
It almost becomes impossible to accept this but, I became LAZY
Yes, you heard that last bit right? I became lazy, not just lazy as in procrastinating but lazy with my work and studies, lazy with my lifestyle, lazy with hygiene, and lazy with almost everything that I wanted to achieve which seemed almost impossible because of my laziness. Whoo, that’s a lot of laziness.
For the longest time, everyone put up with my laziness just because I was nice to them, they wouldn’t care for helping me around and supported my lousy behavior but eventually, that whole journey had bigger repercussions, almost something that I did not expect - I failed, failed for the very first time in my life. And that hit like a lightning bolt.
I was shattered, lost, and almost did not know what to do or expect ahead. It’s like I was moving ahead but the road hit a bump and now, there seemed no way out.
That’s when time management became an essential move for me, something that had to be instilled within the system to be able to gain the maximum output out of me.
Now for management students, time management may seem like an erratic concept, almost neurotic because of the number of times it has been mentioned and looked over, however, the urgency of its utility in our lives has far greater importance than how we’ve always looked at it.
There’s this insanely popular book that takes over a study of the highly effective people across the world and came up with a list of 7 habits that these people swore by, to become who they came to be. It’s called the 7 habits of highly effective people by Stephen Covey but from a time management perspective, what we are interested in today is habit #1 and habit #3.
Habit #1 - Be Proactive
The first habit takes on a more proactive approach towards life asking people to prioritize things that really matter, that form the core of the foundation, and are basically, their bread and butter.
Now for students this could be finishing up that really important economics assignment, or studying for a subject that is difficult for you, a longer-term goal could be working towards some competitive examinations for a specific university that you’ve been dying to get into, or working on settling in a different country, whatever this goal may be, understand why it’s important for you and understand that it requires your attention today, it asks you to take a more proactive approach towards inculcating this goal or activity PROACTIVELY as a part of your life and working little by little every single day towards its fulfillment.
Not only does it ask you to be proactive, but also adopting a proactive personality towards life - instead of saying no, or thinking that you cannot, using words like yes, I can and I will, show a more positive attitude and helps in making the task seem easier and helps in successfully completing them.
Adopting a proactive personality not only makes it easier to do things but also readily makes us susceptible to change, helping us become a chameleon in any dynamic field we wish to go into.
Habit #3 - Putting first things first
Before we talk about the third habit, here’s an interesting time quadrant that I’d like to request you take two minutes out of your day to fill in.
It’s very simple, think of at least 10 things that you have to do today, and then allocate them in the appropriate places based on their urgency and importance to you.
Once you’re done filling up your list of to-do things in the matrix, your brain would have brought in some interesting revelations - that nail salon you had to visit to get your nails done wasn’t important nor urgent either, nor was that trip to the mall, but reviewing notes from the previous week’s class was probably important and so was studying for CAT, but most importantly doing your assignment due tomorrow was both urgent as well as important, and required your immediate attention right now.
So when you’re in a fix with a bunch of tasks to do, how do you prioritize? This is how.
Once you figure out things that are super important and require immediate attention, they become your crises, you work toward them now. You get your things out and you immediately start working towards them and allocate a major proportion of your time in that direction.
After this, you take a look at activities that are important but not urgent - those are the things that have a more long-term implication in your life, things that require a dedicated amount of equal time every single day or week, depending upon how important they are, those are your goals, you need to be consistent and patient with them. Whether it’s working to have a more toned body, learning to play the guitar, or working towards getting into your dream course, these are the things that would require your consistent time and effort.
When we come down to the third and fourth quadrants, we come to the realization that not everything could possibly be super important to us and yet we devote hours and days of our time to them. The third quadrant talks about things that are mere interruptions, things that are not very important but urgent now these could be calling up your friends for menial discussions, going out with them, or possibly drinking alcohol, almost everything that gives you an adrenaline rush - just not for entirely the right reasons. You may engage in them and feel a certain amount of high but end up at almost a similar place, with more self-loathing and almost no gains. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not that these things aren’t some indulges that you should be against but really, some things that require very little of your time. It should be rewarding and relaxing after everything that you’ve wanted to do has been covered.
Now when we come to quadrant 4, those are just distractions. These are the things that you just do, they are not important, nor urgent, and have nothing to do with you. These just end up with no gain whatsoever, so gaming for hours for end or gossiping about that new girl in class who had the audacity to, no, just don’t, it’s just no good and will get you nowhere.
Of course, when we talk about time management, it just does not comprise of these two habits, there are a list of other things that we do, and honestly, if you wish to make your life productive and get everything that you wanna do, YOU should do, let’s take a look at some of those.
Maintaining a to-do list
In times when we are always bombarded with 50 million things to do, it becomes impossible to keep a track of them all and so a humble way to do it would be maintaining a to-do list.
A to-do list is something that you’re not a stranger to so I won’t spend 20 long sentences selling you this, instead I will let you in on a way to easily maintain it.
I’ve been using google tasks lately and it has helped me immensely in keeping a track of all the things that I wanna do, and honestly, ticking off those boxes at the end of every tasks really motivates me to work more, it could be a list of simple chores that you wish to do or some of the assignments that have deadlines, either ways google tasks is simply marvelous and easy to use, in order to easily maintain your work.
Another app that you could probably use, especially in a team setting would be notion. It can be used on your computers as well as on your phones, and it becomes very easily to allocate team goals - especially for assignments and projects and execute tasks efficiently. You can also use it to design your week and month and all the things that you wish to do.
Here’s a link for both of them, you’re free to try them out for yourselves today.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.tasks
Handling the most important tasks the first thing
When we bring up a list of tasks, we allocate them on the basis of their urgency and importance, in accordance with the time management quadrants. Now what becomes important is we handle them the first thing in the morning.
We know it’s important and we have to get it done urgently, now an easier way to work around it would be doing it right away and then getting our peace of mind for the rest.
It will not only make our activity easier, but also clear out our schedule for the rest of the day.
Avoiding Multitasking
When multitasking comes to order, I’ve been it’s biggest prey. I’ve fell down the stairs while trying to send a very important email and listening to music alongside, I’ve seen people using PIP view to watch and shop at the same time, and honestly, the only thing that has happened after all of it is, everyone lost their ability to concentrate or engage in a task for a longer period of time. Our minds became so preoccupied with doing multiple things that not doing multiple things often triggers stress and leads to an episode of emotional breakdown.
NOT only has multitasking eroded productivity, it has taken away our ability to be efficient for a longer period of time.
I don’t need to sell it off more, Don’t drink and drive. Don’t talk while eating. Don’t email while taking the stairs and most importantly, Don’t multitask.
Dividing work over weeks and not just days
Oftentimes when we feel a rush of productivity, we force ourselves do get everything done today itself, however today is just 24 hours, and tomorrow would be another 24 hours but a week would be 168 hours and so, completing that module for your online course wouldn’t be easy in a day but accomplishable in 3 days a week, more so, working out 4 days a week and studying the subject that you find the most difficult - another 3 days a week.
When we divide time like this, our tasks become easier and we are able to accomplish even more, even for simpler chores like choosing between washing clothes today or ironing them - dividing them over the course of a week makes them easier to do.
Making chores interesting/fun
Doing chores is probably the most boring ‘task’ of your day. Doing them becomes even more important when you’re living on your own and don’t have your parents to help you out with.
One of the easier ways to make them bearable, and even fun would be associating fun things with them like listening to music while doing the dishes, or calling up your friends and talking to them while mopping and dusting, or lighting up candles while cooking, whatever it maybe, adding simpler things that bring you joy or get you excited would definitely make it easier to get your things done right away and even make you look forward to doing them the next time.
Understanding your time of ‘creative flow’
There’s that part of the day when we are most productive and it totally depends on how we find our creativity, some of us, when we wake up fresh in the morning find it easier to gain newer thoughts and have that creative rush while others out of us, are more of night owls - super intelligent spectacled fellows who get the best things out during the night. Whatever time of the day it may be, find it out and grasp it. Use that time effectively every single day and spend it on something that interests you.
Whether you’ve content to write on, or assignments to do, videos to edit or some philosophical book to read, use that time productively towards creative development and not let it go to waste due to ‘laziness’.
Developing a routine/schedule
This is a very basic thing, when we allocate time to things, we are able to do them effectively and even end up saving some time out of them. Easiest way to do all of this, develop a routine and follow it to the dot. Wake up, sleep, do everything on a time bomb and trust me, within a week you’ll be gold.
Make a time bank
Out of all the time you end up saving from doing all your list of things quickly and efficiently, make a time bank (virtual ofcourse) and use that time to indulge in your guilty pleasures - be it watching your favorite tv show or going out with your friends, saving time everyday and using it at the end of the week - making it a good 5-6 hours, or using 20-30 minutes of your everyday life to relax and rewind, the time bank technique would definitely add more self-satisfaction and a happier way of indulgence in your daily life.
At the end of the day, effective time management would definitely get you some extra hours of sleep and a more productive, proactive lifestyle - something that will help you, in the long run, to manage deadlines effectively.
Amazing ♥️♥️♥️