The essence of time management training is to help you learn the best way to
utilise your time. A good number of people cannot actually give an accurate and
realistic account of how they are utilising their present time.
Time moves by very quickly and if you don’t manage and utilise it properly,
it will just slip away without you having achieved anything meaningful in the present.
Learn to monitor and utilise your time
A good time management technique is to take a typical week and
closely monitor how you will spend it. It is amazing how this is such a difficult task for
a good number of people to do. There is great value in this exercise as it will
serve as an eye opener on how you currently manage your time.
Monitor your time daily, in thirty minute increments, while taking note of
how you are utilising your time at every interval. It is necessary that
you perform this as you go through your normal routine and make the effort to
note down there and then. Waiting a few hours after the fact doesn’t work.
You will not recall exactly how you spent your time.
Analyse your time usage
The importance of this time management training technique comes with
the bigger picture. At the end of the week organise the activities of the week into
their major categories such as phone calls, projects appointments and others.
Subsequently, sum up the overall time you spent on each category.
At the end of this exercise, a good number of people are disappointed to
learn that they spent quite an amount of time doing literally unimportant things.
Plan your time
The effectiveness of time management training encourages you to
use your knowledge and plan to create the situations you desire.
As you realise how your time is being spent presently it is possible to change
your future by making adequate plans on how to utilize your time more appropriately.
To use your time in a more effective way, you need to make a conscious plan on time usage. Scheduling appointments and activities in their order of priority and
using the help of your calendar or scheduler to track schedules in order to
ensure that you are sticking to your plan.
Plan for the unexpected
It may not be possible to influence the unexpected, but it is possible to
influence how you respond to the unexpected. With your new planned schedules and
appointment tracking which shows how you will consciously spend your time,
you can confidently handle the unexpected.
As the unexpected shows up (which is certain), you can revisit your calendar or
scheduler and see if the unexpected can fit in, and
also work out the priority it will receive.