Psychologists saying about time management
Recently I found a short article “Manage Your Time – Don’t Let It Manage You” by Maud Purcell from psychologist community site. I’m quite interesting in their practical knowledge because time management is more about managing ourselves: controlling our mood, identifying when we are most productive, what kind of work we can do in particular time, how to manage stress and prevent external factors interrupting our work, what planning style is more natural for us, and many more other “why” and “what”.
Ok, here are some of their answers.
First of all Maud suggests to clarify what time management really is. It’s not about doing one hour long task in 5 minutes, but it’s about managing our life and saving time for taking some fun from it.
Second, but not less important, she said what we all have our prime time hours when we concentrate best. For most people it’s early morning, but there are still people who most concentrated and intuitive late afternoon and even in the middle of the night. She suggests to block this time for most important and urgent activities. In AcePlanner it’s A priority. However she doesn’t described methods of identifying the prime time and what most productive time on Monday may not match the prime time on Friday. So my couple of words is here. Most time management books and teachers from time management courses suggest tracking emotional state with colors for a week or two. It’s simple, just prepare sheet on paper: on the X-axes draw days of week, on the Y day hours, half of an hour resolution is enough. Associate colors with your emotional states and mark it in the sheet if your mood changed. Otherwise periodically stop for a second and reflect what you are feeling in the sheet. Our time-management tool also provides this functionality.
Next, she points on time reflection. She suggests to stop for a minute if you find yourself doing some kind of treadmill. Ask yourself if you really need this, if yes, compare it with your priorities and life goals. Yes, this is the central time management tip.
As psychologist she also points us for a valuable mistake, from time-management point of view, absorbing others problems. As usual we need to think twice before putting the power to resolve it.
She also touched procrastination theme. She suggests to not sit “near the task”, just workout it right away. Don’t try to do it perfectly. Good is usually better than perfect. Here Paretto principle is also applicable: 20% of work dedicated for perfectness usually eat 80% of time.
Not surprising for me, she suggests to take time breaks for relaxation. This will ultimately help us being effective not only in the morning.
Here is nothing special, but these tips are quite applicable for our life and work. So let’s save our time for more fun and better life. Don’t hesitate to post comments here. See you next week.
