Key No. 10
Reorganising The Time Of
Your Life
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You have the same time available to you as everybody else. |
Time
Dissipation
Time will pass in spite of yourself. Your time,
if not planned, will be taken up doing routine domestic chores, travelling,
attending classes or meetings, visiting, shopping, attending to a wide range of
social and recreational events, day-dreaming and then doing to-day's homework
and study in what time there is left. The result will be that your homework and
study will not be completed properly and that the necessary revision and
preparatory work for to-morrow will not be done either. Then before your
examination the inevitable cramming will have to take place with all the associated
anxiety and worry.
If you are working you can be kept busy with routine work, meetings, visitors
and interruptions. Day-to-day work will absorb all your time if you let it.
There will always be the current panic or unscheduled job that can gain an importance
all of it's own and will appear to be politically the best job to be handling.
Difficult and complex jobs will be put on the long finger or disguised as
"in progress", "under review" or as "being actively
considered" but in reality this work will be deferred indefinitely unless
you undertake it after working hours or bring the work home. In such situations
you will find yourself working longer hours with less and less time for
relaxation and for your own personal needs.
You have the same time available to you as everybody else. You must
plan on how best to utilise it. Planning the time of your life will put you in
control of your life.
Your Objectives
The first step in planning how to use your time
is to know your main objectives. As a student these are completing home work,
submitting projects, carrying out revision and passing examinations in a
particular career path. As a person at work these are meeting work target
dates, completing projects and participating
in personal development programmes.
Once these main objectives have been defined they must become the focus of your
attention. You may have many other objectives and these should be considered in
order of priority e.g. social and family events. Some of your main objectives could be short term and others long
term. Preparatory plans with time scales and targets should then be laid down
to achieve these objectives. Some objectives will have precise targets, e.g.
examination dates or work target dates. These objectives can be laid out on a
year planning chart.
Daily
Plan
The next stage is to prepare a daily study or
work plan that will assist you in attaining your short term and long term
objectives. This daily plan is an essential prerequisite to positive action. Such daily plans should be made-out to cover a
month at a time.
If you are a student, this should include a homework plan, a revision plan and
a project-to-be-accomplished plan. Remember you can only complete the course by
taking one step at a time, each step being a section of study adapted to suit
your learning ability and time being a specified slot. As some students study
best in the early morning while others learn later in the day the daily plan
should be designed to suit.
If you are working, the daily plan should include
selected goals to be achieved each day in relation to the company's objectives
and your own personal development.
All plans should allow for planned relaxation periods. Look forward to these.
Remember that your concentration wanes every 30 to 40 minutes. Take a break
now!
Action
Next act on your daily plan. Remember time waits
for no plan
By adhering to your daily plan you will effectively eliminate non-essential
elements, maximise your performance,
develop your potential and avoid doing other peoples' work. In addition to
these benefits you will quickly eliminate distractions, deflect callers, keep
away from "nice to have you there" events and optimise your personal
time.
Check-off items accomplished in your daily plan with satisfaction.
Review
Beware of always facilitating unscheduled
callers, undertaking other peoples' work, accepting projects or tasks that are
non-essential and working on hare-brain schemes. Avoid an "open
house" policy. Minimise your involvement in unscheduled events, re-plan if
essential. Such requirements or events can be slotted into unavoidable delays
which will occur in your plan from time to time.
Reduce to the minimum your travelling time to or from college or work. Serious
consideration must be given to minimising this ineffective activity except
where it is necessary for relaxation or physical exercise purposes or where it
can be beneficially utilised .
Having prepared your daily plan now with your particular objectives in mind and
taken the necessary action review your achievements and failures against this
plan and modify your commitment, not the plan, to stay on target.
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1. Time Dissipation Must Be
Halted |