Time Management Masterclass
Time management is easy… Trust me and I will give you some examples where you will realize that you can still manage the time for all of your tasks and have a balanced life.
I think we have enough time to manage – 24 hours… Wow… I think it’s enough.
There are many things we need to do in a day – Work, Sleep, Exercise, Entertainment, Learning, Cooking and babysitting as well. I am not distinguishing between males and females, because I think both are responsible for all these chores in today’s time.
If you look at the tasks I mentioned, they are the minimum required tasks for you to complete a day. Your Mindset is important on how you will manage time to do all these tasks in a day without getting exhausted and frustrated.
Let me break down each task and how can you plan and prioritize these to manage your time each day.
Working hours
I will give work priority, as we all know how important it is and many other things are dependent on the outcome of the work ( that is Salary). You are paid for 9 hours and if you remove 9 hours from our 24 hours you are left with 15 hours. Now, these 9 hours also include your food and drinks breaks, so that is covered.
If you want to make sure you are productive during these 8 hours (actual working hours) then you need to have this mindset that there is no distraction when you are at your working desk.
Plan your day and commit to your daily tasks which are realistically achievable. Commit to your peers and boss of what you can do each day without working overtime. What I do is, mark all my tasks in my outlook calendar and create meetings for those tasks and focus on completing those tasks in assumed time. This way you are focused to complete your daily work on time i.e. 9 hours 🙂
Good sleep is important
The next important thing is sleep, according to the research minimum of 6 hours of sleep is enough for our body for normal functioning. Now here is the big catch, we don’t consider 6 hours is enough, we need at least 8 hours, so I will take out 8 hours from the remaining 15 hours we had, but before I consider 8 hours, let me tell you some good habits you can adopt before going to bed and have a good sleep.
- Avoid the device at least 30-45 mins before going to bed.
- Read a book when you are in the bed, this will induce good sleep and relax your eyes.
- Pray before your sleep. Thank God for the lovely day you spent. Thank God for keeping you safe from all the danger, illness, etc. Ask for forgiveness and request for showing tomorrow morning.
Now we are left with 7 hours.
Execise is important to be healthy
As per me, we should at least give 45 mins for exercise, because in this hectic life, if we take care of our health, it will help us manage other stress and fatigue which is caused to our body.
It is very important that you specifically plan for spending 45 mins in working out because the way we spend our day sitting at one place working in the office/home, our body gets stiff, no movement for long hours, so consider this task very seriously.
Now we are left with around 6 hours 15mins which we can decide whether we want to learn or spend time entertaining ourselves. I will prefer planning for at least 1-hour learning and the rest distributing in must do tasks.
Eating food outside working hours and Family time
I think we should consider 1 hour for breakfast and 1 hour for dinner and 15 mins + and – ( as we also need to spend time with family while eating food). Family time is also important to make your life normal and not too hectic. With this, you are left with 4 hours.
Daily Learning
I think you have to keep this 1 hour for daily learning as to be in the game with this evolving world, you have to keep yourself up to date with new technologies, terminologies, techniques, etc. This 1 hour can be anytime, before you start your office work, before you sleep, you can plan it accordingly, but you must spend this time in developing yourself to be in the game. With this 1 hour spent in learning you are left with 3 hours
Entertainment or Recreation is Must
You can’t just live your life without entertaining yourselves. This is important to recharge yourself for the next day. I spend my time listening to the news, watching a web series, talking to my wife, playing with my kid, and that is how you also should plan to spend this time. I would consider spending at least 1-2 hours daily with these activities to keep yourself alive and happy. With this, you are left with 2 hours and you can spend them on all the other miscellaneous activities which are unplanned.
Miscellaneous
I will consider 2 hours for miscellaneous tasks like, cooking and preparing for daily work, getting fresh, getting ready for the office, cleaning, reading a book etc.
Rephrasing
Rephrasing – Split of 24 hours
- 9 hours of office work
- 8 hours sleep (Ideally it should be 6 hours)
- 2 hours for eating breakfast and dinner
- 2 hours for daily prep (cooking, getting ready for office etc)
- 45mins exercise
- 1-hour learning
- Rest of the time for – recreation
This is how you should manage your time, if you cannot, then I recommend that you start thinking about bringing this lifestyle change, that will help you in the long run.
This is possible only if you plan this, stick to it and follow this very religiously.
See it’s that simple if you want to manage timings.
