Fact Sheets > Time Management

Time Management

Very often, we hear friends or even ourselves grumbling about the lack of time for leisure activities, family gatherings, or even time to have a good rest. To many people, 24 hours a day is not sufficient for them. Yet, you often read of how some successful people who appear on the cover of The Economist seem to manage his cooperate and family activities schedules so well. How are they able to do that? The answer is their abilities to recognise and solve time management problems.
With good time management skills, one can easily control his/her time and life, as well as energy and stress level. You can progress well in school or at work. You are capable of maintaining a well-balanced work and personal life. You are able to handle any increased, challenging workload or new opportunities.

Time management skills are not only for the COOs or the top scholars; anyone can learn time management skills. For some, it is as simple as being aware of the essence and causes of time management problems. For others, even if they already know the skills to manage their time, they are unable to overcome psychological obstacles hidden behind their personality to apply these skills. Whatever the reasons, time management problems can be overcome.

Common ways to overcome time management problems:

1. Personal goal setting
2. Prioritising effectively
3. Delegating effectively
4. Planning effectively

1. Personal goal setting

From the perspective of time management, life is a sequence of major and minor choices and decisions. It is these decisions that you really manage, not the flow or amount of time.

To achieve successful goal, it is important to realise that you are in control of your life. Although we are aware of our full control over the choices we made, we hardly notice how deeply opinions and beliefs of others in our surrounding environment factored our decisions. When setting goals and objectives, ensure that you are comfortable and firm with your goal, no matter what others say, you really want to reach your goal.

Similarly, outcome of successful goal achievement depends on external factors such as weather, accidents, competitors, and any other unpredictable factors that are beyond your control. Concentrating on these factors are not only energy consuming, they do not serve to enhance your goal achievement as they may result in your lose of motivation in achieving your goal.

When setting an effective goal, remember that the goal should be specific, measurable, attainable, rewarding and timely.

A specific goal helps to achieve success via a shorter path.

A measurable goal helps you feel if there is any progress. Feeling the progress helps to motivate you and make the process enjoyable.

An attainable goal helps set a realistic path to achieving your goal. It can be as ambitious as possible but still reachable.

By setting it reachable, it empowers you with more motivation and sense of achievement.

A rewarding goal helps to motivate you along the path towards goal achievement.

A time limit helps to prevent perfectionism and procrastination, which can delay goal achievement.

2. Prioritising effectively

On many occasions, we are unable to complete a task or even start a task, no matter how hard we try. By prioritising our tasks, these problems can be resolved. Prioritising tasks allow us to see which tasks are more important at a particular moment and which task requires more attention, time and energy.

Prioritising is not about having the most advanced computer system, broadband access, or how fast you work. It is about spending time on the right things. It is about making the choices of what to do and what not to do. Possession of good prioritising skills enables you to finish all the important urgent tasks efficiently and in a shorter period of time. It also lets you deal with matters that would otherwise land you in a crisis.

Prioritising principles can be applied in the following ways:

• For planned activities, list all activities, arrange them according to its importance or urgency and label each task as “A”, “B”, “C” and so on. Start off with task A, the most important or urgent task. Start task B only when task A is completed, that is, start a new task only when a preceding task is completed.
• For unplanned activities, be clear about the goals and make a quick decision on which task should be done first, usually relying on your instincts.

Remember to ask yourself if the task can be eliminated or delegated when making your priority list.

3. Delegating effectively

Delegating tasks release time for more important work and extend results from what we can do to what we can control.
It is essential during the delegation of tasks to

• Find the appropriate person
• State anticipated outcomes
• Set up a mutually agreed review date
• Expect mistakes
• Remain an interest in the delegated task

4. Planning effectively

One of the most important time management techniques is planning. Preparing a plan is like preparing a map. It involves a sequence of action steps to achieve a specific goal. Planning helps you to decide how much time to spend on each action, what to do next, and eliminate unnecessary and inefficient actions. More importantly, planning is vital for ensuring that your time, money or other resources are spent within your means, and avoid any crisis or unnecessary problem.

Steps of an action plan

1. Clarify your goal
2. List all steps towards goal achievement
3. Analyse, prioritise and trim your action list
4. Monitor the execution of your plan and review it regularly

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