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How to be a good manager of time
I read a story:
A boy asked his busy father, "Dad, how much do you earn per hour?"
Dad replied, "100 Rupees"
The boy took out some coins and notes from his pocket and said, "I saved 100 rupees dad. Please have it and take some time off from your work so that we can have lunch together and spend some time."
Is your family also starved of your time?
Do you spend quality time with your family? A simple 'yes' will not do. How much time?
People don't have time even to eat breakfast or drink coffee. They gulp it hurriedly. You don't have time to answer your child's query. No time to sit with your spouse and discuss. No time for parents and friends. No social life. How long was it since you leisurely sat enjoyed your coffee? No time..no time..no time.
What are you running after and why? Why don't we have time?
We have time. Fortunately it does not increase or decrease as we would have wished. You got 24 hours in a day. You can neither get more nor less, what ever you do.
You can get reasonable amount of time for all important things in life, provided you don't over load yourself with a particular activity, say, office work, for example.
Managing your time and scheduling your tasks are inter-linked. If you schedule your tasks well, you are better time manager. You can have time for all the tasks. You can manage more work load with out getting stressed.
Scheduling work related tasks alone is not enough. Include personal life also in the schedule: time with your family, friends, your hobbies and social activities. Some of these activities may be included only on some particular days in a week and some in daily schedule.
Time should be managed with care and precision. Prioritise the tasks-important and urgent. Managing your time efficiently helps everybody in the workplace. A wasted minute never comes back. Keep a desk calendar on you PC. You can download it free. It will remind you about important dates and scheduled tasks.
Always keep a pocket book with you. When your PC is not with you, use your pocket book to note down. Note down your personal tasks on one side of the book and your official ones on the other. Copy those points into your PC as soon as you can, with more details as space is not a constraint. Date and time are very important.
Against each task, indicate the expected date and time of action, it may be action by you or by somebody else. When a particular task gets completed, indicate the date, time and any relevant information.
It is better not to use your official PC to note your personal matters. List out all the tasks-those you initiated and those require your response. Mark the important, urgent and 'important but not urgent'. It does not mean you ignore the other tasks.
Don't neglect until they become urgent. There are people who believe that your importance will shoot up when you delay action until it becomes urgent. Keep it in cold storage until everybody runs after you, they say. You are converting a normal task into an urgent one. Please don't do that. It is going to backfire one day.
You may have a lot of knowledge and can do things better. But are you dependable? When you don't do your work in time, you are not dependable. People will not take your commitment seriously.
When you schedule your tasks well and finish them in time, people around you including your boss will follow you. They will know your schedules and will not interfere with them. Since you have a scheduled time with your family, you will have balanced work-life and personal life.
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