The ability to manage our time efficiently is of great importance for happiness in our lives. Success in this critical area will allow us to enjoy the pleasures that life offers, will help us to manage stress and is a big step for our mental relaxation and calm.

Conversely, if we do not learn the basic principles of time management, the setting of objectives and priorities, we risk being caught up by the waves and storms of life that affect us too often.

Good time management is not easy. Not all people have the gift of proper organization. Many people have a wealth of activities and obligations. They feel they are oppressed by the many jobs that have to do with respect to the family, home or their profession. Easily, without the skills and education one can be caught in a vicious cycle of time disruption and priorities with extremely negative consequences.

Despite the importance to manage time efficiently, educational systems at all levels give very little education to young people. This is a paradox if someone considers that the management of time is an essential component of success in all business sectors.

Importance and benefits of good time management

The time is our life. The more we are able to plan our time efficiently, the more we will be able to enjoy our lives.

We need to be careful from the pressures arising from the ceaseless flow of things we need to do during working hours which are increasing and are intolerable by the additional requirements that currently exist in personal and family life. All this creates excessive stress and removes the psychological calm that we all need so much today.

Does this mean that we are doomed to be overcome by the mass of commitments and work to be done, and having psychological suffering and physical impact on our health?

The answer is no. If we do not have the inherent gift of good organization of time in order to manage the countless obligations flooding continuously, it is possible with a methodical effort to learn to apply some basic principles that will help us to manage our time better.

The benefits of such a successful effort are not limited to the psychological calm and personal satisfaction but also lead to a better physical health. So let us look at how best to approach the issue of proper and efficient use of our time.

Planning activities and the need to say NO

Initially we must never forget that the planning and design of our activities for each day, gives us a large degree of control of our time. We must recognize what is important for us to come first in our list.

It is necessary to have the strength to say NO for new commitments or proposals that will take us time and are not within our objectives. We must also teach our selves to politely say no to various social, or family-friendly events, activities, dinners that are likely to charge more our already overloaded schedule.

Let us not forget also that such activities are certainly good but we must not allow them to deprive our sleep, rest and relaxation, which are priority in our lives today.

The setting of priorities

The placement of priorities is an essential prerequisite to the successful management of our time. It is very important to recognize what activities are not so essential to us and to remove them from our list.

Here we must be very strict in our choices. Removal from our schedule obligations that are not crucial for us, frees our time for rest and relaxation or for other things more important.

Delegation of work

It is good to continually look if we can, given that this is possible, to give others to do the work we have. The art of delegation can offer more to people with managerial positions who are usually overburdened by obligations.

We need to be careful when doing work that we consider important to do it right from the beginning because experience shows that we may need more time to do the corrections afterwards.

Partial implementation

Another technique that can help us is the partial implementation of work that is long, difficult or we do not like, but we need to do. We can, for example, every day, systematically to devote ten minutes on a difficult work. Gradually we will be able to finish the job with out understanding it.

Self-monitoring and self-control

We should constantly monitor where and how we spend our time. We ourselves are good to look at how we allocate our time every day. If necessary, for a few days we can write on a paper all our activities and next to each activity how much time we spend on it.

Then we can examine our activities and the use of our time. We must look for what we can remove or how we can change some of our activities to protect our time.

Sleep, rest, holidays, nutrition

Remember the great significance of the abundant and good sleep, healthy eating, rest and vacation for your effectiveness. The sleep will help you relax and be more concentrated, to finish the work in less time and produce a better quality job.

If you feel stressed, then take one-day leave. Do something you like, relax. This will help you organize and manage your time better when you come back.