All of us, some day or other, have seen people around us, who are completing same tasks effortlessly while we are overwhelmed with them. How can they manage so much tasks? Are they God gifted. No!! They are managing their time to do it in the right way. To know they right way, first we need to find out why we fail to manage our time.
This is the first question, everyone of us should ask ourselves. But if we ask it end of the day before going to sleep, we can hardly find any answer. Just ask yourself – What did I do today? You can hardly think of 5 important tasks you have successfully completed. This is actually because of inefficient time management. You did a lot of work without proper planning.
May be, we can think of one or two tasks which we accomplished that day. Even most of the time, it turns out to be an unimportant task which we can think off. Then what did we do the entire day? What kept us stressed throughout the day?
I am not saying that we have not done enough work throughout our day. But the biggest problem is, we have not completed enough vital tasks that we are capable of doing and should do for a better future. Here are 7 reasons why we were stressed and why we fail to manage our time effectively.
Let me elaborate each point which will help you understand it better
We have lot of things to do in our life but we keep them in our brain only. These tasks are not only for a day, but tasks which we have to do may be after 3 days and even some recurring tasks like paying bill or school fees etc.
Our brain is responsible for creative thinking while we do a task. Now if we keep it busy remembering our TODO list, then it would not let us focus on our current task. While we are doing a task, the most important thing we need, to do it best, is concentration. But how can we concentrate on a task? You are writing a book and thinking of your kid’s school fees to be paid or some insurance premium or may be some deliverable at your office or business.
How to solve this?
Brain-dump – Create a TODO list may be on paper or electronic medium
To go somewhere we need a path or a route. Imagine you are going to your office or school or to your uncle’s house. If you know where you are going, then only you can decide the road to take. Now destination in our example is equivalent to your goal. We need to have some goals in our life as every successful people have. You might have a goal in your mind, but it changes every day or may be you are so much engrossed in your work and family pressure that you forget to ensure that you are taking the right path to reach your goal
How to solve this?
Even if we create a TODO list, how can we know which task is really important and what not? We do not know, out of 50 tasks in my list, which ONE task should I pick up now so that I can get maximum benefit? Again, we will keep on looking at the list, start one, then move to another and again a third one ending up completing nothing. You need to remember; it does not matter how much work you are doing? The world is not bothered about the effort you are putting in, all that matters is the output – how much you delivered.
You are one of the bowlers in a cricket match. You have bowled 10 overs giving away a lot of run without taking a single wicket. Are you valuable to your team or the cricket board of your country. NO.
This is because, your team management and captain of your team wants performance. Some performance by which you can help your team win which is the ultimate goal of your team. So you have to formulate your strategy. Similarly, you need to find out which tasks to pick up from your big TODO list.
How to solve this?
Prioritize your list and pick up only the most important tasks that maps with your goal
Estimation is very important to plan your day. Even if we are not able to estimate exactly, but at least a rough estimation will do. Without any estimate of your task, how will you know which of the top priority tasks you can plan for today. You have 24 hours in a day and after deducting the time to sleep, bath, eat etc, whatever time you have, you need to ensure that your planned tasks fit in. Otherwise, it might happen we end up assigning 10 tasks in a day and these tasks might need a total of 40 hours to complete.
In this case, you will not be able to accomplish all making you feel depressed.
How to solve this?
Always estimate your task and plan accordingly
If you do not have a daily plan, then how will you decide out of 50 tasks in your TODO list which all should you do today? You cannot do all 50 in a day. If you look at all 50 at a time, then the entire effort which you have spent in the last few steps would be wasted. You will keep on thinking about second task while doing first one.
How to solve this?
Filter tasks for a specific day. You need to first filter your list for those to be done today
Just think how frequently you switch between tasks. We think we are multi taskers and we are capable of doing two or three things at a time. But it is just a LIE. We can do only one task at a time. When we take up two tasks at a time, we are merely switching between the tasks. Every time you switch from one task to another, and back to the first one, you are taking more time to progress on that task. Doing this again and again makes you spend 500% more time for the same task than you would take doing it in one shot.
How to solve this?
Distraction is the biggest time waster in our life. Distraction comes in various form and the most common being –
Telephone – Telephone is a tool for sharing important information, but most of the time it is used for socializing. It is good to have friends and build network but not at the cost of some vital task.
Social media – Again this new age networking medium takes almost 25% of our productive time. We have developed a habit of checking our phone every few minutes to see if we have got any not so important message from any of our friend or network or got likes on our recent post.
Television – Television can be used for lot of purposes. Most of the time we spend watching movies and series. This is because they have dramatic content which keeps us glued to TV. Most of these are of no use to our productive life unless we plan to be an actor. Watching sports is stress releasing but sometime spending too much time on watching every match from beginning till end will take our productive time. We have to balance our time and watch it only for our refreshment till the extent needed and not more.
Office colleague who visits your desk just to gossip – This is a distraction which you get to see in your workplace. They can officially disturb you during your office hours coming to your work desk. These people do not value their time and do not think your time is valuable.
How to solve this?
Learn to say NO to distraction
We have discussed lot of issues which contributes to improper time management along with links to tips for fixing each of the issues. This is not one day job. You need to do it again and again until it becomes a part of your routine and then you can see the real magic.
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