In today’s world, busyness has become an important earmark .With the fast pacing schedule of ours, time has become the most precious asset for any individual. Today people find a shortage of time to complete all their tasks. We plan so many things a day but are usually unable to accomplish them all. Our schedule always seems to quarrel with time. Even if we seem to complete all our tasks, we are unable to find time for our leisure. A latest survey has revealed that working professionals now tend to spend less time on having lunch, while some of them don’t take it at all. They prefer to spend the time completing their personal tasks. Of course, this routine would lead to a situation of stress and frustration. Something must be done to change this lifestyle.

So how do we overcome this adverse situation?

By using” Time Management” skills to improve the quality of our life. As Queen Charlotte said “Time is too short to do something and so long to do nothing”. Just a few techniques to work in an organized way would suffice us with ample time to carry on with our day to day job as well as spend some time on doing our leisure activities.

In the words of Josy Roberts “Time Management is considered a very important business skill. It is essentially about spending the hours and minutes in the day as effectively as possible. It is a combination of common sense, some basic techniques and experience over time to develop good working habits”.

Consider time as your investment and think about your strategies to invest it in the most suitable way so as to get the maximum benefit. Analyze your methods, ways and where you falter. You would always want to profit from your investment so don’t spend your time like a spendthrift. Think about the ways in which you can take the maximum advantage of it.

As Stephen R. Covey says “The key is in not spending time, but in investing it”.

Some of the best practices to manage your time well are as follows:

• Make a list: It is always better to jot down your to do list. It is a usual practice that before going to the market to purchase goods, we always make a list of all that we have to buy. Similarly, before starting the day, try to make a list of all the activities that you need to accomplish for that particular day. You might do it either on the previous night before sleeping or early morning as per your choice. You might make it in a small notebook of yours or in the form of excel sheet/ word in your computer or laptop. But always make sure that you abide by it.

• Set priorities: First thing first. Always accomplish the task first which is the most urgent. It often happens that due to lack of organized schedule we spend most part of the day doing tasks which was not so important to be completed and leave the most important ones. In the pursuit of completing the most important tasks in the later part of the day, we overdo with ourselves and that puts us in a lot of stress. To get rid of all such situations, it is better to set priorities. The best way is while making a list, write the most important work first and then the rest of them as per their urgency.

• Set deadlines: Give your task a stipulated time period for its completion and try to complete it within that time frame. You are always the best person to know the time you would take to complete a particular task. So, set targets. Without setting targets, you would have a tendency to delay it. So a task which could have been easily finished in 2 hours would take the whole day of yours due to your laziness. So make your deadlines firm and adequate.

• Avoid procrastination: Procrastination refers to “postponing or delaying tasks unnecessarily or out of your careless or lazy behavior”. Procrastination is the best way if you want to kill your time. If you have a habit to procrastinate, then you would never be able to achieve your goals. Bilson Kings wrote in his book “Procrastination is the destroyer of destiny. The world we are living is moving faster so we ought to be moving at the same rate with the world” So doing thing on time is the best way to overcome this bad habit. Alan Lakein referred “Time = life; therefore, waste your time and waste of your life, or master your time and master your life”.

• Switch between tasks, take short breaks but don’t try to do multitasking: Doing a particular thing over and over again for a long period of time would give you a sense of boredom. So it is better to switch between tasks or take a small break. For example, if you are at office and your project requires you to sit for a longer period of time, you could simply take a stroll for around 5 minutes, have some coffee, walk around and come back. This would relax you as well as you would be able to focus more on you work. But remember not to overdo with your break time.

                      One more aspect to take into account is never trying to do multitasking i.e. multiple tasks at one time. It divides your concentration, you would end up mixing your works and at the end you would find that it had killed much of your time. Your quality of work decreases and ultimately you will find yourself at total loss. As the Chinese proverb goes “One cannot manage too many affairs: like pumpkins in the water, one pops up while you try to hold down the other”.

“It is how we spend our time here and now, that really matters. If you are fed up with the way you have come to interact with time, change it”. Simple changes in our lifestyle and the way we work would surely enhance the quality of our living. A more disciplined way of life would bestow enough time to perform our social activities as well as remain best at our work. So, don’t play with your time rather
take it as a serious business.