Principles of Time Management

Manage Time = More Fun

As with most things there is no magic potion to improve your time management. Everyone has the same 7 days, or 168 hours, or 10,080 minutes, or 604,800 seconds, that anyone else has in a week. And yet, some people get so much done, and still have spare time, while others will feel they are behind from morning to bed time. Your time will be used better as soon as you make a genuine choice to improve the way you do things. Effective time management is a choice we can all make.

The importance of time management really hit home for me when I started working. I worked as a first aid instructor for a large training company. I had been in trouble a couple of times for getting to my courses a late. This one day, I was just about to get into my car to go to work when I noticed a branch growing over the driveway. It had been bugging me for ages. I looked at my watch and said "if I leave right now I will make it to work 5 minutes early" so I figured that I had plenty of time to cut the branch. I got the saw, and started to cut. I cut the branch, but then I noticed that there were other branches that still needed cutting. I cut them too! Before I knew it I had a lovely, well pruned tree. However, I had spent 10 minutes cutting the tree and now instead of being 5 minutes early I was 5 minutes late to work. I'd had a choice. I could have left for work when I had planned to and cut the tree when I got home but instead I did everything in the wrong order. The consequence of my choice to be 5 minutes late that day was that I was fired from that job. I now had lots of time to look at my tree.

• Principles of Time Management:
  • You will always run out of time.
  • You are better off to do 15 minutes of something productive than you are to do 3 hours of faff!
  • You need to prioritise.
  • You need to get the important things done first.
  • You can only do one thing at a time.
  • Time management is a skill that you can learn.

Activity

Can you recall a time when you totally stuffed up your time management or left something until it was too late?

How did that make you feel?