Time Management skills meaning, synonym, definition by authors, frameworks and examples

Time management meaning- What is time management?

Plan our actions as per scheduled time. As per me this is the best definition of time management.

This means to take most out of our time we have to plan each second of our day. By doing hard work whole day we may be tired. For this we need regular breaks. But these breaks should also be scheduled as per planning.

Synonyms of Time management

As we know time management means planning our action and make a time schedule. Whether we do any productive work or we take breaks after completing our work, every second of our day should be as per plan. This is time management. Considering this theory, what should be its synonyms. As per me, it should be:

Proper time allocaton:

This means you should allocate more time to bigger tasks and less time to smaller tasks.

Effective planning:

Before starting any task, you should plan for it properly. If the task is too hard, then you should plan for breaks in proper intervals. Otherwise you will be tired and lose your focus and concentration.

Time analysis:

You must analyse your time, after completing any task. You should analyse whether you utilized your time properly or not. If you find any time wastage during performing your task, then you should make proper improvement in your next task. By doing this repeatedly you will be able to manage your time in your next task.

Definition of Time management skill by authors

The act of planning the amount of time you spend on which activities. Managing time helps to increase productivity. Carla Crutsinger: Author who defined effective time management processes.

Frameworks and steps to improve Time Management- How to improve Time management

Here, we will discuss 11 steps framework for time management.

Here we will discuss “how to” of time management because theoretically, you all understand time management, i.e., you should manage the time, get up on time and sleep on time, etc., but how to manage the time?

For managing time we will discuss an 11-steps framework. These 11-steps are:

Remove time wasters
Delegate tasks
Prioritize work
Create a schedule
Set-up deadlines
Overcome procrastination
Deal with stress wisely
Avoid multitasking
Start early
Take regular planned breaks
Learn to say “no.”

1. Remove time wasters

As a student, your biggest time wasters are social media.
It’s become our habit of keeping swapping our phones and going on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
You are spending your maximum time on social media. As a result, your daily, weekly, quarterly, and yearly fundamental output keeps decreasing.
Again and again, social media grabs your attention, and you are not able to focus on any fundamental thing.

You should use social media if:

You are using social media for your career growth
You are studying something on social media related to your career
You are reading blogs or following news related to your career.

But it would help if you came out of your habit of constantly checking likes and updates on your pictures.

Let’s start the framework from the 1^st step, i.e., Delegate tasks.

2. Delegate Tasks

For time management, delegating is an important step.
Delegation means when you reach a level where you can delegate work.
If you have a lot of work, you cannot do all the work in 24 hours. So, it would help if you delegated your work.

For example:

When you are in a managerial position in an organization, you should delegate work to your team.

When you are in college, while doing a group study, you can delegate the topics among your team members. Everyone will understand their topics, and after that, they will share their learning and study. In this way, you and your group members need not focus on all the topics, and your time will be leveraged, and others’ time will also be leveraged.

3. Prioritize work

Giving priority to your work is the most critical thing; most people fail at this.

Everyone thinks every work is important, but every work is not important.

Let us understand the prioritize work using a grid called a time management matrix or urgent-important matrix. This matrix has the following quadrants:

Quadrant 1: Urgent and important

It includes the tasks that are urgent as well as important.
The urgency of a task means that the task needs to be done immediately; otherwise, something will go wrong.
Important work is work that is important but does not need to be done on an immediate basis.
These are fire-fighting mode tasks.

Quadrant 2: Important but not urgent

It includes the tasks that are important but are not urgent, which means you don’t need to work on these tasks on the fire-fighting level.
This is your quality time.

Quadrant 3: Urgent but not important

It includes all the tasks that need to be done right now. But, these tasks are not important.
You think that these tasks are urgent but these are only distractions.

Quadrant 4: Neither urgent nor important

It includes the tasks that are neither urgent nor important but you are investing your time in it.
If your tasks lie in Quadrant 4 and you invest time in them, then you are wasting your time.

You have to do fire-fighting in your life because you have not planned them before.

So, in your life, all the tasks you need to prioritize should lie in Quadrant 2.

It has become our habit to delay the tasks from today to tomorrow and today after tomorrow. In this manner, an important task becomes urgent.

So, you need to prioritize important tasks and ensure they do not become urgent, i.e., avoid a fire-fighting situation.

Despite this, some tasks will become urgent because there might be some situations for which you are unprepared or have never foreseen. It is okay to keep such situations. It would help if you kept time for such situations. But complete important tasks on time.

4. Create a schedule

Have you scheduled your tasks for the next 15 days on a calendar?

The schedule for 15 days includes the following:

What will you do in the next 15 days?
What will you achieve in the next 15 days?
Where will you do the internship?
What household chores will you do?
What college tasks will you do?
What projects will you do?
Which friends will you meet?
Whatever is your daily routine, you should have your complete day schedule on a calendar.

All the incredible people and people who understand time management make schedules.

The best and most powerful tool for making a schedule is Google Calendar, and it is also free of cost.

5. Set-up deadlines

Give a deadline for every task you want to complete or achieve.
The task will not be achieved if you don’t give a deadline.
If you have not time-bound the goal setting, you will never be able to achieve a goal. So, every goal should be time-bound.
In the same manner, you should set up deadlines for yourself.
If you want to achieve a goal, you should set up a deadline.
If you have to submit a project today, then today is its deadline, and you should complete the work before its deadline.

6. Overcome Procrastination

Most students think that “if others can do it, I can also do it, I have the power of social media and everything is easy.”
This is called procrastination, which means that you are living in your dream world, and such a life cannot be successful.
For managing time, you should come out of procrastination. Google Calendar will show you the reality of your time. So, you should maintain the Google calendar properly.

7. Deal with stress wisely.

Nowadays, most young graduates are stressed out. They have anxiety and stress, and some of them are in depression.

You have anxiety or stressed out only when:

You are not able to manage your time
You don’t have clarity of goals

This is because you will not be able to achieve anything if stressed out.

You will never have stress if you have clarity of goals and can manage your time.

8. Avoid Multitasking

Most people think that they are champions, they can do anything, and they can do multiple things at a time whether you give them 4 tasks or 5 tasks together, they will do all the tasks. But this is not possible.
If you have 5 tasks and you have completed 20% of each task and said that you have completed 100% of all the tasks, then you have not done it.
You have to complete all the tasks 100%. Only after that is it called 100% completion.
Champions, winners, and successful people complete all their tasks 100%.
So, it would help if you avoided multitasking.
However, in some cases, multitasking is necessary. For this, you need to go to the first step of “Delegate tasks.”
You should build a team of multiple people and divide the tasks among your team members. When all the people in teamwork are efficient, the complete team will grow, and you will also grow with speed.

9. Start early

During the corona time, you are working in work-from-home mode.
In such a case, nothing is fixed and clear when you should get up and sleep.
Some people are spending their time on Netflix, YouTube, etc., and they cannot determine where their time is going.
Starting early means you should start your day at 5 am with meditation, study, or whatever you want to do, but your schedule should not go wrong.

10. Take regular planned breaks

Sometimes, you feel proud to work 24 to 48 hours in a fire-fighting mode continuously. You have not slept properly and keep on working. In this case, you feel a lack of energy after a few days.
You should not lose your energy; you should keep going ahead with consistency.
Like, hitting a six at one ball and getting out on the second ball is not good for you. You should move ahead with consistency.
If you want to play defensive, you play defensive and then snow aggression.
So, take regular planned breaks. It means you should work hard, and after that, you should take a planned break and, again, start working and then again take a planned break and keep doing this.
This helps your body and mind to rejuvenate.

11. Learn to say “no.”

One of the biggest problems in India is that people say “yes” to every work. They say, “Yes, sir, I will do this, this, and this as well.”
It would help if you learned to say “no.”
If you have not learned to say “no,” you will never be able to grow whether you read this chapter or the complete book. This is because it is important to plan, you cannot say “yes” to everything.
Learn to say “no” and start delegating tasks to people to grow in life.

Benefits of Time Management

If you manage your time wisely, then you will have the following:

High efficiency
Clarity of goal and life, and thus, you will do more work in less time.
More enjoyable and quality of work: You will enjoy your work more, and the quality of work will also be high as you have managed your time and have clarity of your goal.

More Creativity: If you have managed the time wisely, then you will have more creativity because:

You are not always in a fire-fighting mode
Every work will not be urgent and important for you.

This will help in making your quality of life good.

Increased energy in work and life: If you manage your time wisely, your energy will be very high. You will be happy while working.
A sense of peace and zero stress: You will not have stress and can work in peace. This will increase your productivity and overall outcome.
Increases self-confidence: As you work peacefully and have planned the complete work, you know that the work will be completed successfully.

Example of Time Management

Due to time management, there are some critical services without which nothing can work like:

Doctors
Hospitals
Army
Space agencies

All of them work absolutely on time.