How to manage time more effectively

Time management is an art of planning and organizing your time in order to perform different activities throughout the day. Managing your time effectively helps you to perform more chores in less time and it also helps you to tidy up your schedule. 

Some of the advantages of time management are written below: 

1)Reduces stress 

Making a schedule ahead of time and then following it helps to reduce anxiety. When you complete a task and then check it off your list, you can see you making progress which helps to avoid feeling stressed out that you are not doing anything. 

2)More free time 

When you are managing your time effectively it helps to clear out some time from your schedule which you can spend on your hobbies. 

3)Achieve goals in a shorter period of time 

Here are some tips to manage time effectively: 

Set SMART goals: 

In order to manage your time more effectively you have to start by setting goals which are achievable and measurable so in future you can review them and see how far you have come. You can use SMART method in order to set goals. Setting SMART goals simply means that the goals you set should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. 

Prioritize your tasks: 

You should always prioritize your tasks based on importance and urgency. Firstly, you should list all the tasks of one week on a paper and then characterize them based on the following categories: 

A: Important and urgent 

B: Important but not urgent 

C: Urgent but not important 

D: Not important and not urgent 

An example of type A tasks is that the deadline of an assignment is today which means that it is important as well as urgent so you should do consider these types of tasks your first priority and do these tasks at first and only after you complete them then you do another task. 

 Example of type B task could be that an assignment is due next week which means it is an important task but it is not urgent, so you should put it as your second priority. Completing these types of tasks before time helps you to clear out your schedule as it helps to minimize type A activities in your schedule.

 

Type C activities are activities which are urgent but not important, they may include answering random phone calls, reading useless messages, or replying to emails. These types of activities should be your third priority. 

 Type D activities are activities which are not important and they are not even urgent. These activities include time wasters, and pleasant activities. These activities should be your fourth priority. Sometimes people think that in order to be successful you should only focus on type A and type B activities however; it is also very important to give yourself a break every now and then to freshen up your mind and give you a new perspective of life. 

Set a time limit for each task: 

Setting a time limit for completing tasks helps you to be more efficient and focused on the task in hand. When you are doing a task and you have not set a time limit it is possible that you may do the task very slowly this could happen because maybe you were not focusing and maybe thinking about some other stuff or maybe you took a break and it just turned into a very long break. In order to tackle this problem, you should always set a time limit when you are doing a task. 

Take a break between tasks: 

When you are doing a lot of tasks without taking a break in between them, there is a high chance that you start feeling less motivated to complete tasks and you may start losing your focus. You should take a small break of 5-10 minutes between your tasks in order to clear your head and to refresh your mind.