ORACLES OF WISDOM: TIME MANAGEMENT SKILLS

I just thought about my childhood and I realise it was like yesterday... can't just stop to ponder on what I had not achieved yet.

What Is Time Management?

Time management is the way you organize and plan how much quality time you spend on specific activities in other to produce meaningful result. It's not enough to plan, but you have to come up with something productive with the time planned. It's actually a skill that can be learnt. Frankly speaking, not many of us are good at planning, but it's important to know that your time has to be managed properly before you can achieve much with the little time you have. Many of us are stressed out just because we don't know how to manage our time properly, we do lots of work with little result.

Below are few ways in which you can manage your time effectively:

• Learn to set goals: It's very essential to know your goal in life, goal for each year, goal for each month, goal for the week and that of the day. But it's more important to stay focus in accomplishing these set goals, it's never enough to just set them. I read in the bible the importance of setting goals and I quote below:

"For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?" (Luke 14:28 ESV)

Truly, I can't just decide to build a house without proper planning. I will only be deceiving myself, same as anything you do and the way you plan and manage your time. And this will lead us to the second point, which is:

• You must develop a sense of priority: Learn to prioritise when you plan, so you won't have to waste time on less important issues to your major goal. This is likened to SCALE OF PREFERENCE in economics; which is the ability to determine the real demand for certain goods.

In your field, office or business, there's what is regarded as more important than others, place those first in your plan. As much as you are good at multi tasking, you shouldn't disregard the place of priorities.

You'll always get those few minutes to get to finish up the minor task you have in your agenda.

• You must learn to delegate duties or outsourcing if necessary: Now, I'll make example with a boss I worked with once. He is never satisfied until he gets to do the duties himself or standing over you as you discharge the duties. Most times, he get stressed up. And when you tell him to relax, he'll refuse, believing his presence there will make all things right. Guess what the bible said about delegation of duties:

"For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to this one, 'Go!' and he goes, and to another, 'Come!' and he comes, and to my slave, 'Do this!' and he does it." (Matt 8:9)

Even God in the bible had to delegate duties to man after creation: God brought “every beast of the field” and “the fowl of the air” before Adam “to see what he would call them” (Genesis 2:19, 20)

It saves time when you delegate duties to others, so you can focus on other issues or business.

• Major on what best work for you: Many people function best at night while others are very active in the morning. I learnt this early in life. I was never good at reading or writing long notes, so I decided to always jot major points of what I listen to or read and was never late to class so I don't miss anything. I walked about with my little notepad. And I had a friend back in college, who need not seat in class but photocopy notes made and read for long, he's go to go.

• End those habits of procrastination NOW!!! You can't plan well when you procrastinate a lot and you loose the time that you would have used to accomplish the task in the first place, thereby compiling duties. At the end, you end up stressing yourself. The task you knew you should have done yesterday or the day before is lying fallow waiting for you.

What you should have accomplished yesterday was piled up to join today's task, making today's task more bulky and tasking.

• Lastly, Be patient and stay calm: Most times feeling overwhelmed by too many tasks can be very stressful. Anxiety can result to making lots of mistakes which will bite into your time. It pays to be calm while discharging your duties.

Time management is a skill and it's what separate and distinguish you from others. The different between a well established wealthy man and middle-class man is not the wealth but better time management and good savings culture. If you want to be more productive in life, make all the minutes count.