The simplest answer to the question “Time Management - Why Should I Care?” probable consists of the fact that your time is one of the major necessary components of your life. What does “necessary” mean? Let’s say that without chocolate you can survive but without water and air it is impossible. So consider time as air. When there is a lot of it you are spending it and you don’t notice and do not appreciate it. But when there starts to not be enough then you begin to be painfully concerned that sometime ago you wasted it.
Let’s begin to think as a businessman. How much do you estimate one hour of your time is worth? (in dollars). What percent of your time is spent, in your opinion, wisely and how much - so-so? And how much is, in general, all for nothing?
Those questions are not just simple curiosity. Try to calculate the damage in dollars in such situations. Calculate first: A busboy in a restaurant wasted one hour of his work time because of some personal problems. Let’s calculate now how much the restaurant will lose if the power will go off. Compare the amount lost in the first and second situations. I am sure you will agree that the restaurant owner will lose much more in the second situation than in first.
Now try to calculate the cost of your hour. Consider your education and experience because these are assets that you have. The more you have - the higher your hour cost. Also add the things that you can do for yourself, family, and friends. The more of these opportunities you have the sorrier you feel about each hour spent all for nothing.
Meanwhile, there are not a lot of these hours in our life and the saddest part is unlike monetary losses the loss of time cannot be renewed.
Everything that we discussed so far is mainly for those who haven’t started concerning themselves about their time. I hope that our discussion convinced them that time management is a very important part of our life. But there is another problem that we didn’t discuss yet: deficit of time.
The phone constantly rings, the dozens e-mails still unopened in your mailbox, and the deadlines that tie you. Why are there only the 24 hours in a day? This is a big problem which a lot of people think is impossible to change. I can assure them that this is a mistake. There is no such process which could not be improved! There are many ways of time management and I am sure you tried some but you probably didn’t find the right one yet that fits your character, your style of life, and your methods of working. It is important to mention that most time management techniques are oriented on a particular type of person: prepared, analytical, etc. Such a situation is far from normal and creates a very harmful bias: that there are people predisposed to the management of their own time, and those not predisposed.
I don’t understand why chaotic, spontaneous people are worse than others. Why should they appreciate their time less than others and why they should not put efforts to learn the management of their own time. There must be time management methods for those types of people and they exist. The time management niche for such people is an extremely interesting area of research.
|
The first and main step in the process of managing your time is to learn how to create a To Do list and how to plan your time properly. I hope the time that you spent by learning the materials offered on the http://www.welcome-to-self-improvement.com/blog/ won’t be spent all for nothing, furthermore it will be your first step on the way to becoming a person that can control and manage your own time. |