By: Breanna Naegeli, PhD
VYP Board Member & Dean of the Honors College at Grand Canyon University
It’s about that time! February marks the start of National Time Management Month. The art of strategic time management often surfaces as we discuss achieving lofty goals, striving for a health work-life balance, or unlocking our potential to achieve peak productivity in a single day. In today’s fast-paced, hyper-active world, effective time management skills are essential to ‘having it all.’
Here are a few tips when thinking about your personal time management:
- Time Management is a Choice: Time is the ultimate equalizer. Regardless of your profession, family life, or other circumstances, we are all operating off the same clock. We are blessed to have 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, which is 168 hours a week – the difference is – how do you prioritize your hours? To improve your time management skills, first make the time to conduct a deep analysis on how you are spending your time currently. Do you say yes more than you should? Do you over-commit and then stress about being over-committed? This reflective practice may help you better learn when to say yes, when to say no, and when to say not at this time, but let’s circle back in a few months to revisit this idea. If something is truly important to you, you can and will make time for it. Don’t believe me? Let’s just see how quickly you make time for fixing a shattered cell phone screen or a flat tire on your car. If the things that truly mattered to you were treated with this same urgency, you’ll see priorities can be shifted on demand.
- Be Where Your Feet Are: This tip is as literal as it comes. The more you can be mentally present and focused with where you physically are, the better you do with retaining new information, sparking creativity in yourself and others, and productivity in the moment increases. We all know that time management comes with how we organize our day, how we break up large projects into smaller tasks, how we chunk our time overall, how we utilize technology to create efficiencies and so on, but if you’re not present in the moment and with the task at hand, you’re being counterproductive. In other words, stop multi-tasking! Stop checking emails and text messages during your meetings, don’t be engaging on your cell-phone while hosting a one-on-meeting with an employee, don’t be stressing about traffic and your dinner plans for the family while simultaneously starting a team meeting. Don’t be prepping for the next meeting while currently in a meeting. Distractibility increases impulsiveness, poor decision making and hinders goal attainment. Stay present. Stay focused.
- Stay Solution Focused: Why do we procrastinate? Not because we work better under pressure or enjoy the adrenaline rush of meeting a deadline with minutes to spare – so stop selling yourself that story. We procrastinate because we associate emotions with the task at hand and dwell in that emotion bubble rather than staying solution-focused and getting it done. We dwell on how tedious, monotonous or time consuming a task may feel, or let ourselves get distracted with anything else that could bring more joy or enthusiasm. If this is something that has to get done, just get it done – otherwise, your free time will never feel like free time.
In short, time management requires the need to prioritize and plan your days and weeks, the assertiveness to set personal and professional boundaries, and taking accountability for managing the distractions in your life so you can amplify your productivity. So, let’s get to work!