Time Management Toolkit – A Blueprint for Managing Time Better

Improving Time management does not happen overnight, more so, if people have never paid attention to what works for them. It needs a lot of getting used to, once people start and fine tune, to see what works for them.  People need to change their habits, get used to scheduling and train their brain to follow the methods of time management, so that they can manage time successfully, and are able to manage things on a regular basis that they have planned for themselves. Most of the times, people begin to follow something with great ardor but somewhere down the line, before they begin to reap the benefits, they give up. The reason most people give up is because they did not plan it right and did not understand the obstacles that they may come across.

The process of disciplining yourself to manage time successfully can be very tedious and it can make you uncomfortable too. While we are not talking about standing on the head to make time stop, for some people, something as simple as sticking to a schedule for a day can be difficult. To manage time better you must diligently follow your schedule and patiently continue to follow it till you start seeing the benefits of developing this habit.  Well, somebody said, ‘Good things take time’.  Invest time in getting better at Time Management, by utilizing this Time Management Toolkit, A Blueprint for Managing Time Better.

What is Your Routine?

To begin with, check the manner in which you spend time every day.  As a starting point of Time Management Toolkit, track your time for an entire week and write down what you do every 15-20 minutes. Check the time you spend sleeping, time that you spend procrastinating, time you spend on your mobile, laptops, any other gadgets.  A week later you will know exactly how much time you spend doing nothing, how much time you spend on things that matter, and how much time you spend on things which don’t matter in the long run.

Remember that everyone needs to enjoy and spend good time either playing, watching TV, listening music or doing anything that they love. This is not considered as a waste of time until you overdo it or miss something that is more important, because you were busy watching TV or playing games on your mobile. If you spent the entire day playing games on the computer when you had to complete an assessment or meet an important client then you may have to reconsider the amount of time you assign to it. Always remember, ‘you are the only person who can come in between your greatest future successful self’.  To make Time Management Toolkit work, you need to work! 

What Are Your Goals

Once you know what you are doing with those precious 24 hours you get every day, the next step is to set the goals that you aim to achieve.  Time Management Toolkit is required or Time Management is important if you have something to achieve, and that requires your time to take actions towards your goals – some of these goals could be very well towards Time Management as well, or following Time Management Toolkit steps as well.  Read ‘How to set goals‘

Write down your goals and be realistic about them. Write down short term and long term goals. Goals can play an important role when it comes to motivation. Achieving your goals will help you do better when it comes to following your schedule.

What is Your Plan of Action?

Once you know the goals that you wish to achieve, you must write down a plan of action. Your plan of action will decide how you intend to achieve your goals.

Your plan of action will help you update your calendar to reflect the things that you want to achieve. While the plan of action is a rough guide to help you figure what you will be doing every day over a period of time to realize your goal, your calendar has to show more realistic data.

Set aside time every day to go through your schedule for the next day. Set your calendar by assigning tasks in intervals of 30minutes so that you have a clear idea of what you are doing in the 24 hours that you have.

Are you assigning the tasks wisely?

When you assign yourself tasks every 30 minutes for the next day, try to club tasks in a manner that will make you more efficient. When you make your calls and check you emails in the same chunk of time, you will be more productive because both of them are desk jobs and you can handle the two at the same time while you are at your desk. Try to club your desk jobs at the same period of time and once you move out of your desk, move on to the next work without putting your mind into the things that you left at the desk. Concentrate on the task you are doing at present.

Are you Doing it Right?

Finally, you must have a way through which you can find out whether you are doing right or not. So give yourself 15 minutes every day to reflect on what you did the whole day and find out about the things you learnt and the mistakes you made. In the beginning, you may not be able to accomplish everything on your schedule. While this is not how you planned to move, there are times when some things come up and you will have days when the schedule may mess up because a task took longer than expected.

Since you are in the learning phase, you must figure out the reason why the task took so long and either look for ways to achieve it in a timely manner or give more time to the task in the future. This will help you achieve precision with your schedule over a period of time.

Once your schedule is more accurate you will have less worries about finishing a task to match your task because you will have assigned the right amount of time to complete it. However, give yourself time at the end of each day to reflect on the tasks you achieved that day.

This time of reflection helps you focus on your goals and it gives you a clear understanding of whether you are going at the right pace to achieve your goal or not. Check weekly performance and monthly goals to find out if your time management skills have started paying off.

Balancing Your Goals and Life

Follow your tasks in a timely manner and make it a point to achieve the things in your schedule. Celebrate the achievement of goals and do not forget to enjoy life in the course of achieving your goals. While it is important to value time and to ensure that you work hard to become successful, a person who leaves his family and friends behind trying to clamber up to the top usually ends up being more disappointed than someone who values the people and things he/she loves and makes time for them too while he works hard as well to be successful.