Have you ever thought you might have a problem with time management? If so, you only have two options.
The first road you can take (and the most common road chosen) is just carrying on with the status quo. Unfortunately, doing so can have a tremendous negative impact on both your personal and professional life.
On the other hand, you could choose to do something about this problem—to make a change. If this is the path you decide to go down, there is good news…
There are a number of steps you can take - and things you can do fairly easily – to improve your time management skills in significant ways.
Goal setting, creating and following to do lists, designing and executing project plans, prioritizing, outsourcing, and even finding and/or asking for help, are all effective strategies you can incorporate to manage your time better. Yet, these are just a few of the many options you have. We even talked about this more specifically in a past article.
But perhaps the best way to help you learn to manage your time better is to tell you specifically why good time management is critical.
After all, as with anything, when you know why you are doing something – if that “why” is big enough – you will be motivated to stick with your efforts until you see success.
Here are 4 reasons why learning proper time management is important:
It’s an Easy Way to “Find More Time”
Ever wish there were more hours in the day? Of course, you do! Everyone does. Well, learning and practicing good time management skills is the easiest way (really, the only way) to make this happen. It’s also generally free or low-cost. For example, most of the activities and strategies for managing your time better don’t cost a penny. Even outsourcing or hiring out here and there can be relatively inexpensive if managed properly.
It’s Important to Your Personal Life
Poor time management can definitely have a negative impact on your personal life. Pay your bills late? Don’t have time for friends? Spend way too many long nights at work? All of these can harm your relationships dramatically—in more ways than you could ever imagine. Friends, spouses, and/or romantic partners will not want to put up with this for long.
It’s Important to Your Professional Life
If you don’t know how to properly manage your time, you can easily get distracted. Similarly, you could procrastinate on completing important projects. Consequently, they may not get finished on time or end up not reflecting the best of your capability. If this happens repeatedly, you may find yourself written up, demoted, or worst-case scenario—fired. As a side note, if you lose your job, this would likely impact your personal life as well.
There are only pro’s – no con’s – to improving your time management
There is no downside to learning to practice successful time management techniques. Doing so can only benefit you, your work, and your relationships. Since no money technically needs to be spent on time management tools or training, you really have nothing to lose. On the other hand, you have everything to gain.
Once you understand the reasons to learn – and benefits of – good time management, there is even more good news. It’s super easy to find a number of strategies, techniques, and tools to help you learn to manage your time better.
As touched on above, you can start by setting long and short-term goals. Then, break those goals down into task lists and action items that are easier to manage. From there, you can incorporate timers and tools that help you stay on task.
Overall, the most vital keys to improving your time management are really basic: realize you have a problem or need improvement in this area; focus on why developing this skill is essential to you and your life, and then make a plan and execute. If you follow that very basic roadmap, you will likely be amazed by the headway you can make and the results you can achieve in just a short time.
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