When Is Time Management Effective?

Time management is an essential skill today. A skill that permits you to do (or not do) certain required or intended things. But time is a very scarce resource and for that reason, time management should be an effective one! So how you can do that?

Actually, it is simple! If you know how and if you can answer some very basic questions.

What Is Time Management?

Time management is a necessity for you, to do what has to be done. Basically, it is:

the act or process of planning and exercising conscious control over the amount of time spent on specific activities, especially to increase effectiveness, efficiency or productivity. Time management may be aided by a range of skills, tools, and techniques used to manage time when accomplishing specific tasks, projects and goals complying with a due date. Initially, time management referred to just business or work activities, but eventually the term broadened to include personal activities as well. A time management system is a designed combination of processes, tools, techniques, and methods. Time management is usually a necessity in any project development as it determines the project completion time and scope. (From Wikipedia: Time management)

Moreover:

Time management is necessary because (1) available time is limited, (2) time cannot be stored: if unused it is lost forever, (3) one’s goals are usually multiple, sometimes conflict, and not all goals are of equal priority, (4) goals cannot be accomplished without the application of effort, which requires the use of time. (From Wikipedia: Time management)

What Are The Aspects Of Time Management?

But the time management is not a unilateral entity and certainly is not only related to the management of time. It is much more, and usually incorporates some very personal core values and principles, since time is the one resource you cannot reclaim after you have spent it. Therefore, the simple act of the management of time has to do with who you are, what you believe and above all how you want to live.

This is the reason, why the time management is related to:

1. (personal and/or professional) Vision and core principles and values. The simple act of taking time (!) to maximizing the output of your spend time in a given activity (another definition for the productivity!) proves the significance of such an activity. Moreover the effort, the energy the deliberation you provide, in order to do the things more efficient, with more speed and accuracy, in larger volumes, and the literature you monitor (including this post!) for maximizing the work-life balance, indicate, the how you want to spend your personal and professional time, as well as many aspects of your character.
2. Decision – Making process. The how and where you spent your time relates to your priorities and objectives, either in personal or professional life. You might choose to maximize your free time against your working time and in order to do so, you need perhaps to do this action, to avoid those activities, to delegate other, etc. In any case, you need to employ a coherent time strategy for managing your time and be more productive!
3. The personal manifestation of the time management principles you use. You will be characterized, partly(!), by your execution capabilities and your ability to keep up your commitments, both of which are related to your time management capabilities. So it is important to develop and exercise excellent time management capabilities!
4. Command – Execution. As, in point 3, your ability to command your time and resources and executed upon (or under) these constraints is capable to promote you further or set serious barriers in your future objectives and course of actions.

How Can You Do Effective Time Management?

In order to perform effective time management, you need to use various strategies and techniques that would bring you closer to the achievement of your objectives. These may be:

• Deep understanding of your capabilities and objectives,
• Development of a coherent strategy for handling the time either on personal or professional level,
• Planning of your future course of actions based on the understating of yourself, and of your available resources,
• Assumption of the responsibility and accountability for the delivery of the intended future outputs to you and to the others,
• Understanding of the time an activity needs to be done and commitment on its completion,
• Acknowledgment, design, planning, evaluation and (if needed)modification of:
  • when can you do a certain activity or task?
  • what have you to do?
  • how can you do it?
  • how can you build and align the required time slots with the intended objectives?
  • what is the minimum set of conditions needed for you to deliver a fundamental change in your everyday actions?
  • how can you get equipped with the proper habits, mental attitudes, tools, skills and knowledge in order to develop and deploy the right capabilities in relation to a more effective time management?

The answer to these questions is, of course, a personal choice and depends on the deep reflection of your personal “wants”, ambitions and deliberations. But these answers, not only would characterize your time management style, but would probably make a huge difference in your capability of being productive, or not!