Time Management at Work - Essay Example

Time is something that people can’t control. A lot of people usually have problems handling and managing their time between work, family and pleasure. This paper aims to provide the steps which would help people manage their time. A lot of research provided steps on time management. With proper time management we can get a lot of benefits. These benefits include financial stability, stronger family bonds, healthier body and a lot more. Thus, proper time management offer never ending opportunities and advantages in the future. These opportunities can be from work, from family, and our self. INTRODUCTION A lot of people often say and wish they had more time. Time is something that is always out of our reach. We need time like we need water and air. But we can never get enough of it. But is this really true? Or is it just we have time but we don’t know how to make the most of it? We have 24 hours a day, 168 hours in a week and about 480 hours a month less 8 hours of average sleep. We just need to manage it properly and make the most of it. TIME MANAGEMENT Considering our time, we have to balance it to 3 major factors namely work, family and pleasure. We see our work differently. To some people, work is drudgery which is a necessary evil (Koscec, n.d.). To others, work means fame and fortune, or a life’s mission and contribution of love (Koscec, n.d.). These differences on how we see work will affect us on how we do our work. Some people see work as joy, as a monotony, and as an escape. But work should truly become love for our family made visible (Koscec, n.d.). This is the means to support them, the means to send the children to school and even to provide their wants. Thus, it is very important to manage our time to do our job effectively. Many people consider family as the one of the most important things in life. However, there are a lot of times that people cannot manage time effectively that they cannot spend more quality time with their families. This greatly affects family relationship. It is very hard to choose which one to prioritize over the other. But I believe that we don’t need to choose, we just need to know how to manage. Aside from family and work, we also have issues on our personal time for leisure and enjoyment. This is the time that we pamper ourselves after all the stress that we got from work or life. Sometimes, we really need to have a good break from all the stress or even just a short time to please ourselves. Guys usually go to the gym or have good drink and poker night with friends. Women usually pamper themselves to the spa and go shopping. The question is, do we still have time for all of this? Yes, we do. And this is the reason of this paper. Time management is the art of arranging, organizing, scheduling, and budgeting one’s time for the purpose of generating more effective work and productivity (www.wisegeek.com, What is Time Management?). Since we live in a busy world, we need time management to do all our tasks and responsibilities. A lot of researches, books, magazines are dedicated to provide the people steps on how to manage their time. It is very important to all of us to be able to manage our time. Our work, family and our happy selves are all waiting for us to spend our time with them. Time Management at Work There are a lot of steps on how to start managing our time. It is just a matter of setting ourselves that we have to be responsible in following the steps and that it is for our own good. We may have a rough start but getting through the ways will make us realize the steps are just so easy to do. We just have to put our minds and hearts to it. Here are the steps to follow on how to manage our time at work. Step one, make a plan. According to Christina Crowe (n.d.), setting a time to plan out our day, whether it is going to be in the morning or later at night is a swift start. We should think about the most important tasks that need to get done and how to get them done. It will help to keep us focused on our tasks if we make a detailed plan. Step two, order tasks according to their importance. Not every task will bear the same weight (Crowe, n.d.). Some of the tasks need to get done as soon as possible. It is better if we rank our tasks on a scale and list them from the most important to the least. After being able to have a ranked list, we should complete the tasks from top to bottom. By listing our responsibilities this way, we will not get confused as to which task should be completed first. Step three, limit email. Email can eat up time quickly (Crowe, n.d.). We often find ourselves checking email all morning, only to realize that we wasted a good few hours doing nothing but responding to messages. We should limit checking our emails to once or twice a day and make a good use of our time to do our tasks.   Step four, relax. You can’t work yourself half to death for hours without eventually crashing (Crowe, n.d.). We need time to relax and clear our thoughts. We can take a walk, exercise, meditate, eat our favourite food or read a book. We should relax and enjoy and we will be surprised how much more we can do. Step five, avoid pessimism. In short, be optimistic and think that everything will be accomplished. Having an optimistic mindset will do wonders to our overall work routine (Crowe, n.d.). We should be set on accomplishing more works rather than wondering if our efforts will really pay off. It is better to be motivated to work rather than being pessimistic of the tasks ahead. Step six, share your heavy burden. Sometimes, our tasks are really difficult to accomplish on our own thus it is very helpful to find a friend to share our workload. We need not be afraid to ask for help or advice. There are a lot of people out there who are just happy to help (Crowe, n.d.). Step seven, work at your productive peak. Time is not created equal (Crowe, n.d.). There are times when we tend to work more diligently than others. Sometimes when we get so carried away doing our tasks and we lose track of time. Thus, during the times that we really wanted to work, we should take advantage of this time and work on creatively. Time management at work can be sometimes challenging. There will times that we will have difficulty prioritizing especially if we cannot determine which is more important than the others. But we should be optimistic. We should think that there will be friends that are ready to help us in situations that we need helping hands. Do not panic. Although times can sometimes be rough, we should always relax. Sometimes too much panic cannot help us get our work done. But we should always remember, if we can just manage, we can never run out of time. Time Management and Family Some of us complete our work at home. Some of the parents are not able to give their children time because they often come home late from the office. Sometimes, due to work pressure a lot of us have fights with the wives or the husbands. Because of this, we need to revise our management skills to effectively manage both work and family. According to Koscec (n.d.), little things in relationships are big things. Showing caring and commitment through smalls like listening, respecting other’s space, saying “thank you” consistently over time makes a huge difference in the quality of family life (Koscec, n.d.). Koscec (n.d.) stated the four basic roles of the parents: 1. Provide the basic necessities of life: physical, social, emotional and spiritual. 2. Protect family members from physical, social and emotional harm. 3. Nurture family members in love and kindness. 4. Teach family members principles and values that empower them to have rich, rewarding relationships and joyful, fulfilling lives. But aside from these basic roles, we need to have the family optimizers to maintain a good relationship with the members considering the busy life of each member. The parents who are said to be working should not forget these roles. Children also need extra efforts from their parents to make them feel cared and loved. Thus, the following steps will help up optimize our relationship with our family. Plan. Planning is very important for maintaining a balance between work and family (www.articlesbase.com, Effective ways to juggle between work and family). Having a family is a very tough task, which means a lot of monthly responsibilities. So planning is a very important thing to do. It is better to plan our monthly activities by prioritizing based on their importance. We should include our health check-ups, payment’s for children’s school fees, house bills and monthly family day. It is very healthy for a family to spend time together. Planning outings and family time will make our family feel being loved and cared. So it is good to plan outings with the kids even once a month. Next is, communicate. Coming home late from work and without spending time with family will affect our relationship with them (www.articlesbase.com, Effective ways to juggle between work and family). We should make sure we talk to everyone at home when we’re back from the office. This will make our family know how much we care for them even if we’re busy. Conversing with family after work will help us in easing our work related pressure and reduce our stress. Make sure not to entertain too many calls related to official work when at home. This may mean missing out family time. Thus, we should avoid entertaining office calls unless important. Another thing to consider, enjoy the weekend. Weekends are to relax and enjoy with family and friends and to forget about office worries (www.articlesbase.com, Effective ways to juggle between work and family). This is the time for us to enjoy and spend it with our family and make up for the time not spent during the weekdays. What’s important here is the moment you spend with family and not how you will spend it. You can simply spend a movie time at home or eat at your favourite restaurant. Family can be considered the most important part of our life. But we cannot support them if we don’t work. That is why we need to work for our family. Sometimes, we are challenged on how to balance work and family. There are times that our family are having problems because we cannot spend more time with them. Our kids are always asking us to be with them and spend time with them during weekends. But sometimes we tend to forget to give them what they need. Sometimes we get too tired from work and we forget our promises at home. But with time management and family optimizers, we can create a happy family despite our work. Time Management and Pleasure Everybody needs a break as they say. Sometimes we need to have our own break from the busy life at work or at home. It is healthy that we make sure that we are intact ourselves. Sometimes, due to the busy life, we tend to forget that we do need to check if we are still the person we want to be or hope to be. There are times that we forget ourselves after taking care of other. So if we have time to spend, we should also make sure that we have time for the things we want to do. We can go to our favourite spa or favourite bar or club. We can play our favourite sports and poker with our friends. However, we must not forget that to go back to reality. It is just a matter of good time management. So if we follow the steps and guides stated above, then surely we will have extra time for our pleasures. Advantages of Time Management Managing our time well can give us a lot of benefits. These are the things that we can greatly appreciate in our lives today. We just need determination and effort. The first benefit that we can get is to gain financial stability. When we can manage our time well, we can gain better financial strength (Orr, n.d.). We can find a time to complete all our tasks and sometimes, we can even insert additional hours giving us more income. Our good performance at work can earn us promotion and trust from the management or company. The opportunities along the way are never ending. One of the important advantages of time management is having a stronger family bond. When your time is managed properly, everything is done within its set limits, and you no longer have to ignore your family to get more work done (Orr, n.d.) When we can manage our time well, we don’t have to make excuses why we have to miss an important family event, or cannot help them with house chores or why you have to leave and work during the weekends. Another benefit that we can get is better health. An increase in the amount of time that you have can help you become healthier (Orr, n.d.). If we have more time, we can find time to exercise, cook better meals, or visit a doctor for check up. Time management is also stress management. This can help us live a healthier life with lower stress. With time, we can better take care of ourselves and our family. Another advantage of time management is to allow us to be in control. A lot of people keep ranting about how their life is beyond their control. But it is still possible to take command of most of the things in life without much difficulty. The key is good time management. We should get rid of the habit to delay or postpone our tasks. Managing time also helps us save our precious time. We can utilize this time to pursue our hobbies or find pleasure or spend quality time with the people we love. This quality time increases our self satisfaction. Being able to save more valuable time can help us utilize this time to make us feel happy and help us be at peace with ourselves and others. Completing tasks within a set time period boosts your confidence and self belief, as your life seems to be under our control (http://lifestyle.iloveindia.com, Benefits of time management). We can feel a sense of accomplishment on being able to fulfil all our tasks and duties on time. That is what time management can give us. It allows us to bask in our own glory and feel simply great about our achievements (http://lifestyle.iloveindia.com, Benefits of time management). Surely, there are lots of benefits of time management. We just really need to be more determined. We can follow the steps to have these advantages in our hands. Time management can give us a lot of benefits and thus it is very advisable for us to manage our time. Time management can only not give us ease at work but can also guarantee us a happy and loving family as well as time with ourselves. Time management can therefore help us become more productive and happy in our life. There may be a lot of changes to make but the results are all worth it. The above cited benefits and advantages are very pleasing to know. We just need to put more efforts and determination to manage our time, and we can enjoy a much enjoyable and happy work and family life. CONCLUSION With so many advantages of time management, it is easy to understand why people are determined to achieve it. With a little bit of push to ourselves, following the correct techniques and proper steps, we can manage our time well. When we succeed in this task, we can benefit from many advantages that good time management can offer. By proper management, we cannot say that we need more time. We cannot run short of time anymore. Our tasks will not keep piling up anymore. Owing to our fast-tracked lives, not many people realize how important it is to manage our time. This will make our lives organized and balanced. Since time is precious resource. By being able to manage our time, we can go much ahead in our lives. Those people who take time for granted often end up losing much. Prioritizing well is the key to time management. Proper time management can help improve our quality of life. Read More