The secret of time management.
Have you enough time?
Part 1
If you ask a group of teachers to list their biggest headache I bet ‘not enough time’ would be among them. Not having enough time leads to all sorts of problems; being late, not finishing things, missing out, getting home late, being tired all the time, losing your sense of humor, going into work early and maybe a few more besides.
So are you really short of time or are you just spending it unwisely?
Before you jump up and down about having too much to do or not enough hours in the day think what you would say to somebody who does not have enough money or if you ran out of money yourself. This analogy is not as daft as it sounds, we know we have a fixed number of hours in the day and we must spend them wisely if we are do everything we want to do. In a similar way a great number of people are on a fixed income too so there as a similar set of pressures, you need to spend your money wisely or you will run out of it.
Here is what most people would do about not having enough money:
1) run up debt by using credit cards etc hoping to pay it off later but there is interest to be paid and it is easy to get into a spiral.
2)economise by finding cheaper alternatives, cutting some things out or maybe by sharing the cost with others by clubbing together and bulk buying to get savings. In other words be creative.
3) look for ways to earn more, possibly promotion or a better paid job or working longer hours.
You may have other ideas for saving money, if so please let me know! Which is the best long term solution or which one would you advise your best friend to do? My guess is that you would choose the most sensible, that of economising and being creative. Numbers 1 is just storing up trouble for later and number 3 will need more time!
What do you do if you do not have enough time?
1) find more hours. You could cut back on sleep since you were not sleeping that well anyway! Perhaps work during lunch to make more time available for work.
2) multi task, do more than one thing at once, but how well and how much stress does this involve just keeping track of everything?
3) stop doing something, plan better or share the task to make time savings.
4) work quicker but this may involve lowering standards or cutting corners.
So which would you recommend doing? Options 1,2 and 4 all lead down the same path. They are little like 1 and 3 in not having enough money and do not actually tackle the root cause or problem, in fact they will only cause more problems down the line. So it is with time, being stressed, not sleeping, dashing and rushing is not good for you or the quality of your work. So why do we do it and what else can we do? Well we know we should be doing number 3, stop doing something or share the task. I would add that you need to be honest with yourself too, just like money you know when you have not got enough.
Is there a solution to not having enough time and if so what is it?
The short answer is yes but I will leave this until part 2!
ace-d 