Broader Perspective

Time Management is basically task management in order to achieve your goals. You have to worry about time management because you only have 24 hours in a day to manage everything – your work and your life.

Without clear-cut definition of your goals, time management will remain at best an exercise in futility. So from a broader angle time management involves the following steps..

• Know what your goals are
• Spell out your goals in writing
• Write down all the step and tasks involved in achieve the goal
• Periodically review your goals and prioritize your tasks

3 Foundations of Time Management

1. Convert Your Goals into a Workable Plan
   Convert your goals into actionable step and try working out a plan to accomplish them. The process of planning is very important; it clarifies a lot of confusion and prepares a roadmap leading up to your goals.
   
   
2. Learn to Distinguish Between Urgent and Important
   The important tasks are those that take you closer to your goals, and hence provide progress and reward. Those tasks are often not urgent but are crucial for ultimate success. Quite frequently urgent tasks are similar to beating around the bush and are not really important.
   
   
3. Know the 80-20 Rule
   Focus on important things first. Remember the 80-20 rule: 80 percent of reward comes from 20 percent of effort. Practical time management involves continuous refocusing your attention and time to those most important 20 percent.

Practical Time Management

At the ground level, time management involves understanding the difference between issues such as:

What is urgent and what is important
What is trivial and what is vital
Doing right things and doing every thing
Being busy and being productive

Smart time managers plan their activities on the above guidelines and end up getting more done in less time and efforts. It allows them to stay focused and be in control of their life. They derive their sense of accomplishment from everything they actually got done and how many goals got accomplished.

Most people think that getting as many tasks done in the least possible less time is all that there is to learn about time management. However, proper time management skills will allow them to spot vital tasks that would really make a difference and focus on them, rather than getting exhausted in trivial matters. Lack of time management skills means feeling stressed and tired and a list of “to-do” things that never ends.

Developing time management skills is a journey and you become better and better with experience.

You may like to read 5 Basic Time management Tips