Tips To Manage Your Time Wisely

In response to my previous post regarding our bad habit of mismanaging our time and procrastinating your work, ending up with poor, mediocre, or lackluster results, I would like to urge everyone especially the youth of the Philippines to start managing our time wisely.

The reality is we do not have the luxury of time in our hands and we only live once in our lives so we have to do our best to make the most out of the time that we have been given to do the most worthwhile and meaningful things with our lives and our time.

1. Attitude. I believe to be able to get out of the rut and break the habit of procrastination and the issues concerning time management, we have to take the challenge seriously upon ourselves and be consistent in establishing the system that we would want our body and our mind to develop.

We need to know what our main priorities should be and from there, you would need to have the conviction to follow through the plan of action that you will do to help you develop good time management skills.

In practice, if you know that you need to go to work or school early the next day, then you should sleep early right?

But it is not as easy as it may seem because if your body has already been used to sleeping late at night, chances are you would find it difficult to sleep on that particular night thus causing you to wake up late in the morning.

You would have to make concessions by cutting on your sleeping time which is always going to have drastic consequences in your physical performance and thought process. See the article "Sleep and the Teenage Brain" by brainpickings.org for information on some consequences of lacking sleep.

So what do you have to do? Straight and simple, you have to get into the habit of sleeping early by slowly adjusting your body and mental processes to that system.

You have to expend your energy and brain juices for the day so that your body and brain would be spent and be wanting to take rest. When you finally are ready to sleep, turn off the lights, get into bed, and drift off.

Avoid resisting sleep because if you do not get enough rest at night, you would feel the consequences the day after.

You have to stand firm and have conviction to follow through developing the good habits. Of course, it would take a lot of effort to get into the routine of sleeping early or studying or getting your work done and submitted on the deadline.

But we can always ask God's help to make our attitude right and to change us for the better.

2. To-do List. Keeping tally of the things that you need to do is one way of managing your time so that you would be able to allot days or hours to do the activities listed.

You can probably write them down on your journal or planner but if you have a really good memory, then you can simply keep a mental checklist of what you need to do although writing them down would still be best just in case you might miss or forget anything.

Arrange your to-do list by priority and time required to accomplish the task.

If the tasks still seem to be cumbersome or heavy for you, then you can try segmenting them further into smaller doable tasks.

For example, if you have to do a research paper on gallbladder diseases or make a report about the quality of education in your locality, then you can probably divide that one big task into simpler tasks.

In making a research paper or position paper, you can first go to the library and find useful references and texts on your topic then collate the necessary information that would make the presentation flow smoothly.

Then simply arrange the data you gathered and your own ideas to make an informative and well thought out paper.

Stay on schedule but allot time just in case there might be external factors that would cause delays in your work. Discipline yourself so that no time would be wasted in dawdling.

3. Multitasking. By this, I mean that you can do two correlated things to accomplish a single task. This would usually happen when working in teams where you can divide the tasks that you have listed so that they may get done quicker.

Doing separate tasks is also really helpful especially with regard to household chores because you can start cooking a dish while preparing the table, sweeping the floors, and fixing your bed.

Through this, you would be able to minimize the amount of time that you would need to spend doing your work and so that you would have more time for leisure, contemplation, and other stuff.

4. Pull the Plugs. Get rid of any distractions when you are doing your work because they might tempt you to pull your attention and focus away from what needs to be accomplished.

Turn off the television, lock your cellphones away, and shut off your laptops if you would not need them to finish your work. Go to your room and close the door to have peace and quiet so that you can immediately get the work done.

5. Take 5-15 minute breaks.  While doing the work that needs to be accomplished, there are times when you might need to take some time off to get your mind refreshed and consolidate the ideas in your head.

Doing this can help you relieve stress so that when you sit down once again to finish your work, you will be focused and the ideas would smoothly flow from your mind directly to paper or the computer screen.

6. Begin with the end in mind. We have to set our minds to the goal that we have to finish for every day and every hour and the goal that God has in our lives which is to transform us into His image and likeness and also to unleash the highest potential He has for our lives to use us for His glory.

We must stay focused on the path that God has paved for us so that we can truly make good use of our time.

7. Always have time for God. We need to spend time with God because He gives us everything that we ever need in our lives, even days that pass by and the minutes that tick away on the clock and we have to use everything that has been given to us by God for Him since we have been created by Him and for Him (Colossians 1:16).

So our time, our abilities, and our very being should be dedicated and devoted for the glory of God.

In conclusion, in every breath that has been given to us by God and in every moment that He renews our lives, we have to make good use of time because when the days have gone by, we cannot go back in time to change the past.

God has given us a specific purpose so that our lives would be meaningful. Jesus came into the world to save us and to give us a full and meaningful life therefore, we have to be grateful to God for every moment that we rise up in the morning and be economic with our time.