Time Management: A Rare Skill

It’s a Sunday morning. Dan has many projects to complete, all due Monday morning. Yet when he sat down to try to do some work, Dan “accidentally” reached for his phone and decided to grind a couple of hours of Brawl Stars. Dan convinced himself that there would be plenty of time later. But time flies by, and before he knows it it’s 10 PM. Doing work nonstop, Dan becomes sleep-deprived and treats everyone in a bad mood. As a result, everyone unsubscribes to Dan on YouTube, so he is no longer making a viable income.

Little did Dan know that he was one of the many individuals who lacked time management skills. Time management is crucial not only for accomplishing self-driven goals in a timely manner, but also for creating an orderly way of life that allows one to stay on track of their mission. Otherwise, one could experience unwanted long-term consequences. Time management skills are a lot like money: it’s easy to lose, but hard to gain. In fact, the average individual spends around 7 hours a day on the internet. With digital technology as the biggest culprit, a possible explanation for this is that our attention spans are drastically shortened, leading to an inability to focus on a task for an enduring period of time.  Even when issues of time-management are so remotely obvious to individuals, the amount of effort that is required prevents them from taking any action. Despite these potential concerns, there is still hope for people to develop time-management strategies.

The National Institute of Health defines time management as “a form of decision-making used by individuals to structure, protect, and adapt their time to changing conditions”.  In other words, time management is about having a predefined order of events, which can be ensured that they will be accomplished. If there are obstacles to such, then you should find an alternative pathway to make sure all desired tasks are completed. A common approach to deal with the latter is to “just deal with whatever comes up”, as mentioned by Acuity Training.  To put it simply, people have this belief that they are able to deal with such obstacles in those times because it is easier then to devise a plan to overcome such barriers. However, those times come, and the self-confidence has vaporized. Similar intuition reliance techniques are merely ineffective because they rely on passive methods to achieve active results. A large part of this is the nature of humans to set desirable, but unrealistic goals. 

One effective way to secure time management in your life is to write down the tasks you wish to accomplish within certain time frames. Research shows that writing things down helps develop better retention and focus, allowing one to focus on those tasks at hand. Furthermore, it would be a good idea to write some easy tasks that you can do quickly to be done first. That way, it gives you encouragement to do the rest of the tasks, resulting in a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment. A thing to remember, though, is to make sure your goals are realistic. Reflect on your own abilities; be honest with yourself, but don’t be too harsh. If you can’t write an essay in 40 minutes, then don’t pressure yourself into doing so. It will only lead to you getting sidetracked because you likely will want to delay the rigorous expectations of yourself. Keeping out the list of things needing to be done can also act as encouragement, as it reminds us of the need to be focused and “locked in”. Hopefully, writing things down will turn into a long-term phenomenon that works as a time-management method for you. It is essential that breaks are included in your scheduling; otherwise, you’ll only end up pushing yourself to be more burnt out. 

Another way in which you could force yourself to adhere to time management is through physically restricting your environment. For example, if a common distraction is going on the internet, then lock your phone for a certain period of time. If your friends distract you, do work by yourself. If you separate yourself from the source of distraction, you’ll likely forget about these distractions. As a result, focusing on the task at hand becomes more efficient. However, in some scenarios, this restricted method actually is contradictory; the lack of entertainment that usually keeps a person going could inhibit one from moving forward. In that case, certain timestamps or milestones can be set up. Tell yourself that you will grin studiously for 40 minutes, and then get access to your cell phone for minutes before it's locked up. Keep repeating this cycle, and a new method of time management may have just been realized. 

A large part of installing time-management skills as part of one’s characteristics is the amount of motivation they hold. Motivation is inversely proportional to effort and proportional to reward. More times than not, the effort is greater than the reward, leading to a lower motivation to set time-management goals. To decrease the effort, try decreasing the expectation by a large margin, but cycling it often. Going back to the example of needing to write an essay, if writing 3 paragraphs in 40 minutes seems like too much work, tell yourself to write one paragraph. Of course, you’ll need to adjust your time accordingly, or else you’ll be wasting your time and potential. After all, you know you can achieve the long-term goal within the time frame you have set, you just need to eliminate the effort that it seemingly takes. Allowing yourself to do this could also benefit you by teaching you to do one task at a time. When we think about time management, we may think about trying to get as much done in the shortest amount of time. Therefore, there is a tendency to rush through things and multi-task on projects. However, if we learn to take a breather and learn to be productive to an extent where it isn’t unrealistic, then our relationship with time management can be better facilitated. 

In summary, time management continues to be a large concern for humanity. Although there is a large consensus on the issue, little is done to combat it. Time management could not only benefit yourself but encourage others around you to follow suit, seeing how successful in meeting your goals you are. We should always keep in mind that anything is possible; all that needs to be done is to organize and prepare properly.