Time Management is defined as one’s capability to make effective use of time and productivity, especially when at work. This blog explains importance of time management.

If you think dwindling few seconds is fine, ask a marathon runner the importance of it.

Quite often, in our management classrooms, we’ve been taught of various ways to manage our day. However, to optimize our day, we first need to value the importance of the most priceless thing on this planet i.e. TIME.

We all must have heard this adage – “Time and tide wait for none.”

Time is essential in our lives and plays a significant role. It is very important for us to respect the time because the time gone is never going to return.

Punctuality is essential in life; if you want to live a successful life. A successful person always respects the importance of time in life. If you are not punctual; you may have to face the repercussions of it. Therefore one must comprehend the estimation of time and should be punctual in life.

Time is considerably more valuable than money because we can gain money in any phase of our life yet we can’t acquire the time back which has passed away. The stream of time can’t be ceased, and hence, we should utilize our time astutely.

But what is time management? It is nothing but a set of practices, skills, tools and techniques to optimize the time correctly. We have only limited time 24 hours a day; so we should plan it wisely.

Below are some simple time management strategies:

Plan your day in advance

Few people think that planning a day is somewhat unrealistic as we can’t predict the future. But even though we all know life is uncertain; still we should have a plan for tomorrow. If you have a plan in hand, you can spend more time on critical or urgent tasks. Or else, ad-hoc tasks, less critical jobs will consume considerable time of your day, thus leaving hardly any time for tasks which are of paramount importance.

Start your day with a checklist

Today, we have many Android apps to prepare a handy list of tasks, reminders and important notes. We can also use a pen and paper for this, but sometimes it is not convenient to carry it everywhere. Hence, one can harness the time management apps such as Toggl, Harvest, TimeCamp, ClickTime etc.

Take adequate rest and sleep well

Rest is one of the significant factor in time management and productivity tools. It’s no clandestine that feeling tired and sleepy the whole day will hamper the productivity of the day. If you want to perform with your 100% efficiency; don’t cut down the sleep. Take regular breaks, adequate rest and get refreshed before you begin your task.

Optimize your multitasking and focus on one task at a time

Today everyone is focusing on multitasking and multi-skills but when you are performing on a single job; multitasking sometimes lead to distraction from a goal. Instead of performing several tasks at a time; it’s better to work on a single task then have a break and move to the next task.

3 most important tasks first

When we prepare a checklist; we may be having a bunch of to-do activities in our bucket. But as we all know that life is uncertain and unforeseen interrupts or incidents don’t knock the door before coming in. So the best practice is focusing on the first 3 very important tasks, ticking them off and then moving on to the next.

Accept your mistakes and move on

If there are any misunderstandings, fights and debates; admit the mistake and move on. People spend a lot of time to give explanations about the errors and discussing the past. Whatever happened is over; accept it, think of solutions to rectify it and move on. Instead, focus on how you can avoid the mistake in future instead of discussing the past.

The fundamental factor for success in life is time management, and it will always play a pivotal role if you wish to be fruitful and productive in a day to day life.