We are looking at how you can control your time, how you can make the best use of your time, how you can make 24hrs count for you to be productive and bring forth much more result than any other day for you.
Time management is a skill and like every other skill, it has to be learned. The secret behind time management is daily practice. Putting those principles into effect every other day, making sure you do the same thing every other day because no matter how disorganize you are, no matter how you’ve not been manage your time, no matter how much you are a procrastinator. The truth is when you learn the principle of time management you will be a success. We want to help you make good use of every seconds, every minute of your time, getting the best out of it and to make something out of your day.
What makes for time management is your Decision and your choices. When you wake up in the morning, what you chose to do that day, what you chose to do with your early morning hour, what you chose to do you’re your afternoon, what you chose to do with your evening and that makes up to time management.
The starting point of time management or controlling of time management is to have self goals. You have to determine, what do I have to accomplish or do today? You have to make up your mind, what will I be doing this week, what will I be doing this month, what will I be doing this year, all of this sums up with your time management. You need to have goals, you need to have tour priorities set down and then you make sure that you follow it up.
It’s not enough to write a list of this is what I want to do today, this is where I want to go today, this is who I want to talk to today and at the end of today you module up your list and you just do things haphazardly.
Another thing is having a little planner in your hand. A little jotter that you can hold unto it and write down. When you write down, you will not forget. A wise man has said that the shortest pencil is better than the longest memory. You can’t keep everything in your mind, you may tell yourself that I will not forget this, I will remember but you will discover that at the end of the day, you discover that you’ve forgotten an appointment, you’ve forgotten what to do. You will end up not achieving anything the whole day. Get a paper, to write, this is what I want to do today, this is where I want to go to, this is who I want to talk to. For a teenager, your target and your goals will be about your education because most of what occupies your time, at this time of life is going to school, coming back from school, and you find out that most people that are not able to manage their time are people that allow their time to be wasted, people that do things in excess. Some people like playing computer game in excess, some people like to watch TV in excess, other are just there on the internet browsing in excess. All of those things steal your time. Some people can chat on the phone for more than one hour, I wonder what they are talking, all of these are time wasters. If you will be able to discipline yourself, control yourself, if you will be able to have a mastery of your time, you will be somebody to call a time manager.
Like I said, you need to have a planner and what is on your planner is a list. You have a list of what you want to do, the places you want to go to, the things you want to do, who you want to be and all of that.
Like I said earlier that you need discipline, a lot of discipline. That means, if you blot out time to chat and you say from 8-9, I’m going to read and you will make sure that’s exactly what you will be doing at that time. No procrastinating. The truth is, that’s what stops people from managing their time. A wise man has said that procrastination is a thief of time. So refuse to procrastinate, if you have things to do, you make sure that you do them. Most people like to do things in last minute, for instance, they have a test on Friday, they will say that I will read on Thursday night, that is not a good time planner, that person will not do the best that he can because he has wasted Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, when you would have been planning, reading, reviewing your note but you were not doing it. But if you can take out time and say, I have a test on Friday, so I will read on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday you spread out the reading, you discover that you don’t jam everything into your head. Most people go to school and what they do is that they cram, they read a night before the test, cram everything the teacher has said and of course, they will go to school the next morning, drop it and get a good score. But the truth is that they don’t know what they were taught. If you ask them the same topic they had 100% or 95%, what is the meaning of this, they will be blank, and they won’t know what it is. What they did was that, they used one night to cram everything and then the next morning, they poured everything out. If you plan, you will understand what you are reading, you will be able to read and take a pause and ask yourself, what have I actually read? What is this teacher trying to say? What is this definition all about? You try to understand it, so if you have to be in a study group, you will try to explain to another person what you have read. But if you are cramming everything, when somebody ask you a question, you will go blank without really knowing what to answer or even trying to run back to your note, in that case, you haven’t learnt, you only crammed what you were taught. You need to have a to-do list, or a reminder list that you carry everything that you go. If you are somebody that doesn’t like carrying a very big diary, you get a very small one, write all those things, and plan it. You could use early in the morning to read. The secret behind time management is been able to do much. There will always be urgent and important skills but when you have mastered the time management, you will be able to separate the urgent and important things. For you to be a success, you have to focus on the important things and don’t spend you time unnecessary.
One of the things that make people not to be able to be able to plan their time apart from procrastination is trying to do everything for everybody. For instance, If you asked them, can you go with me to the market? They will say yes. Can you go with me to the hospital? They will say yes. They say yes, to everything without thinking of themselves or even their own goals, without thinking of the time they have for each of those things. Practice to take one task at a time. If you pick a particular thing, focus on it until you are through with it; make sure you have completed it before you jump to another thing. Give it 100% concentration.
There are times that you could engage in what I call creative procrastination. In that sense, you are procrastinating but it’s a deliberate thing from you because you know that thing may be urgent but it’s not important, you now procrastinate it. You could be reading, may be, you see a name on your phone, you look at it and say, I could call this person back now, that’s an urgent thing that you may say, but it could wait, it’s not important. So you can hold on and later on you call the person.
You can also make time in the evening, all those evenings you always spend playing games, talking, doing one thing or the other, you could also use it to do your job, your assignment even do your project. Don’t wait until an assignment is due tomorrow and then you carry the whole thing to do it over night. You can also use the night season, That’s the hour between 12midnight and 3am, is also another good time when most people have slept, which is a very good time for reading and you discover that you will concentrate more because everywhere is quiet an you will be able to put in so much even though the time is little. You could use that instead of doing midnight calls, don’t fall for the GSM trap (especially in Nigeria here), don’t use those times to be making calls, use those time to read. The truth is that for now, as a teenager, as a youth, or even an adult; learn to focus on your education because that’s what will take you to where you will be tomorrow. Nobody is ready to listen to a failure, if you are able to give your best to your education, read, study, get good grade (not only in academics but also in the other areas of life – leadership, relationship etc.), come out of school and be somebody. Everybody will want to listen to you and then you will be very successful.
You have to discipline yourself, as I said before by making sure that you spend your time doing valuable things. Things that will help your long time goal, short time goal and even your ultimate goal, whatever that goal may be you discover that you will be excellent at time management.
Learn to say no when the need arises. Don’t be a yes-no person. Don’t let people carry you on their own journey; you also have a journey to go. If your friends say, oh let’s go, you were not planning for it but just because your friends say it, you want to please them, because you don’t want to be dropped out of their group and you now go ahead and follow them. Habit makes you or they break you, if you develop a habit of time management, you will be able to discipline yourself towards the good habit that will grant you a huge success.
Practical things that will help you in time management
One of them as I mentioned earlier, is avoid procrastination. That thing that keeps telling you, let’s do it next hour, tell yourself no, I will do it now. Even if it tells you, let’s do it tomorrow, you tell yourself no I will do it today. Why wont you go ahead and do what you can do today, why wait till tomorrow? Avoid procrastination, become somebody that have priorities, have important thing that you will want to do. Plan, set goals, do your assignment on time, exercise your body, take out some time in a week to do some exercises.
You need to build relationship, set out time but depending on the role that you play in life. If you are a student, a child, a friend and even a grand child to somebody. Set out time as a student, I want to read from this hour to that hour. As a child of my parent, I want to do so house choirs for them; I want to help my mum with the dishes I want to wash their cloth. You sort out time to read that is convenient for you. If you want to visit Grandma, that you could do on Sunday because it is a free day
Also, learn to relax. Like I said before don’t be a yes-yes (or no-no) person, don’t pick unimportant phone calls, you can call back later, you could send a text like I saw your missed call, anything urgent and the person could call you back, but don’t make other people’s problem your own and don’t do too much of anything. Too much of eating, too much of calls, too much of browsing, too much of phone calls, excessive computer games, avoid all of that. Make sure you develop a sense of saying yes to your most important things and no the less important things.
Learn how to better organize yourself. Do an evaluation, at the end of the week, look at list and thick out the ones you were able to do, pick the things that you were able to do and those you weren’t able to do. Even at the end of the day, you write them out, you could write in your diary, OS- outstanding, the things I couldn’t achieve, the things I couldn’t do. You could move them down to tomorrow, so those things will not be there waiting and at the end of the day, you have crisis. You could have a planner which will include calendar, date and a space to write down what you want to do, even some diaries have some specific times like 7:am, 8:am, you could slot in those spaces the things you want to do and then carry it along with you. Always create time to plan, if you plan, you are planning to succeed but if you don’t plan, you are not planning to succeed.
Identify the most important things you want to do. For example, Studying as a teenager or a youth is very important, that should be your number one goal in life. Now you are developing yourself, whatever you put into yourself is what you are going to use tomorrow. You go to school, to learn different skills, make sure you learn them well. Even if you are not in any school, life is still our teacher.
