Manage Your Time

Time is the most valuable asset in our lives. A good time management may not 100% secure your success, but lacking a good time management will definitely jeopardize your success. Bad time management always equals to stress.

When we are young, we may feel we have the time asset to fail. However, there will be a day that we will feel our time is not enough any more. From long-term to short-term, we always need a plan. A good plan will act as a checklist in our lives. It enables us to manage our time in a high efficient level. According to timetable, we can distribute our time logically in the order of importance to us.

To further illustrate, we may need a list of 50 things to do in our lives. This list will help us to keep a clear mind of what we are looking after in the span of the life. As we accomplishing every item in the list, we are achieving a successful life. In the last day of our life, we can satisfyingly say: “I accomplished everything I set off to do in my life. I didn’t leave any regret.” As in my list, I want to be outstanding in any organization where I have stayed, leave something memorable for others, have a great family life, educate my kid (if I will have any) the value of our society, travel as many places as I can in our world, and so on. Some of us may say: “it is really difficult to accomplish every dream.” However, if you don’t put them in your agenda, you will never get there. Therefore, to have a meaningful life, get a list first!

In addition, we need to have an idea about what we should do now, when we are facing dozens of things everyday. Dr. Randy Pausch had a great elaboration on this issue. He drew an analyzing picture. In the picture, the horizontal axis is divided to two parts: due soon and not due soon, and the vertical axis is divided to another two parts: important and not important. Thus, the rectangular plane is divided to four blocks: due soon and important, not due soon but important, due soon but not important, and not due soon and not important. Apparently, "due soon and important" should be the priority, and "not due soon and not important" will be the last thing we need to do. However, how to choose between the rest two blocks? The trick is to choose the thing which is important but not due soon. Since unimportant things are not necessary to be done, we'd better to spend our time on those important things and solve them in advance.

Apart from the to-do-list of the life, we also need a to-do-list for everyday. The best way is to plan each day, each week, and each month. You may come out with a calendar that can tell you clearly where you will be next Wednesday 2 o’clock in the afternoon. You may say: “I have a good memory to have every thing in my mind.” In this case, a timetable will be a powerful tool to help you stick on your plan. Nevertheless, every plan will face changes all the time, but you cannot change a plan unless you have one.

Efficiency is another important aspect to manage your time. Any low efficiency will result to a higher time cost, which you could actually use to enhance the quality of your work or even enjoy your life with the one you love. In this case, try to organize everything that may interrupt you during a work. For me, I sometimes go to hide in library to create a intact span of time to concentrate on my work and leave a note on my door to all the students about the proper visiting time. Therefore, I can expel interruptions as much as I can. Normally, we spend more time than we expected in a piece of work, and being efficient is gaining extra time.

The last thing is trying to fully use your time. Some tasks can be organized to do in the same time, such as having lunch and informal meeting with coworkers. I usually organize my morning activities efficiently, cause it is important for a lazy man to sleep even ten more minutes. During baking my breakfast, I normally pack up my working stuff. I do proofreading of essays on the way home or to work. Such small things actually can help you to create an intact span of time to finish a big work without worrying about small things.

In sum, time is really important to us. Spending time efficiently is indirectly maximizing the opportunities to enjoy our lives. Thus, you may want to start from today to have plan about your life and your days.

1. Make a long-term to-do-list for your life.

2. Have a clear schedule to organize everyday activities.

3. Order your tasks by importance.

4. Try to enhance your efficiency to save time for other things.

5. Put things together in a possible way to create intact time spans for big works.