How To Manage Time and Avoid Procrastination?

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

Deciding which task to do first and last is always a difficult scenario. You are torn between the important tasks and the activities that either give you pleasure or stress. Sometimes you rush, sometimes you procrastinate. Cliché might this sound, but time is beyond gold – it is priceless. You cannot bring back the time you wasted on non-essential things and lately optimize it for more goal-oriented tasks you should have done before. Achieving personal productivity and professional growth is a matter of discipline and requires little sacrifice. School and work need to meet impending deadlines for assignments, presentations, business meetings, and other time-sensitive commitments. You need to finish this task, yet you also want to engage in private leisure, to enjoy the social life.  

So, how do you resolve procrastination and avoid jamming?

The primary key is Time Management, pal. It is one of the core ingredients to fulfill difficult and important duties ahead of or before the deadline. Manage your time wisely, and you are guaranteed with multiple accomplishments you deserve for being productive and responsible.

If you are interested to learn how to make use of your time so that you will avoid hastening on completing your work, assignment, etc., how to balance personal/social life and professional life, and to be smart on things you should prioritize, then stay on this page to gain all the tips that will guide and help you achieve quality time management.

 

1.   Be Organized

Reduce clutter and determine the most important things you should be doing. You may use your calendar to indicate the tasks or remind you of those that needed immediate attention. It’s better if you ask yourself these questions:

        - Is this urgent today or this week?

        - Will I gain skills from doing this?

        - Will this be worth my time and energy?

If you answered yes to all three questions, then you should do it right away or plan when you will do it. Otherwise, you said no, then you should eliminate them, and perhaps you can just do them when there’s no duty holding you back.

 

2.   List them down and segregate

When you are bombarded with tasks and several of them need immediate action, why not list them down? Same with the previous tip, state all the things you need to work on whether they are urgent or really important. Break down or group these tasks as to: important and time-sensitive, urgent but not essential, or just a distraction. Time Management is a battle between needs vs. wants. It’s an economy of time. You have to maximize and utilize it for something more necessary. It is how you will kind of budget your schedule.

Additional tip: You can divide your tasks into a four-quadrant system by applying Covey Time Management Matrix. Steven Covey, the author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People popularized this matrix as a framework for organizing priorities. It easily categorizes tasks that need serious attention. Below is the template of the Covey Time Management Matrix that you can use to distinguish the most and least important items in your to-do list.

3.   Economize your time

After making the list, decide which day you will schedule these tasks for both weekdays and weekends. Allocate them on specific days you ought to be working on. For example, you’re a student, and during weekdays, you’re supposed to be in school studying and performing academic and extra-curricular responsibilities. Aside from schooling, when you reach home, you will also need to do household chores, or help your parents run some errands. Plus, you also wanna engage to in your favorite hobby let’s say, writing or reading. Unfortunately, the next day your teacher gave you a difficult group project which takes weeks to be finished and needs thorough planning. Another problem is that some of your groupmates are indifferent – they are not eager to contribute. If you cannot encourage them to participate in preparing your group project, then it will sum up to your workload. Surely, you don’t want to waste time begging your groupmates to help you but you have to solicit their contribution to accomplish your project on time.

You wanna have a happy hour without thinking about all these burdens, so you need to utilize your time practically and efficiently.  But how?

Easy as simple: Do not fix unnecessary distractions into your schedule. Do not let these nuisances disrupt what you already have planned for the week. If you placed work, business, and school for weekdays, then go as planned from Monday to Friday. If you arranged household management activities and family matters, or any personal life responsibilities for the weekend, then let it be on Saturday and Sunday.

Say you opt to do Task A for Monday, there’s no other day to do it but in that exact schedule. Same with other activities, do it as you have prepared them to. Follow your plan where activities are time-sensitive.

 

4.   Rule with Discipline: Know your priority

Undoubtedly, you will not be able to attain superb time management and finish all your tasks on or before the deadline without "discipline". You should know how to control your appetite, the stuff that urges you to turn away from your duties. Having a sense of discipline when you want to achieve a difficult thing makes it achievable. The value of attitude is another core solution to get away from the diversion. If you planned to do Task B for this time, do not let your urge to engage in Task C interrupt your plan. Task B is urgent and important because it is needed as soon as possible. Therefore, Task B is your priority. Control your desire to get leisure time when you ought to be working. You can occupy the time for Task C after you have finished Task B. Be responsible enough to handle your attention and to discipline yourself.

 

5.   Limit tasks according to your capability to finish them

Multitasking is good but having a focus on a particular task at hand is better. Do not push yourself to engage in multitasking if you are not in the condition to do so or if it’s impossible to finish them in a day. It might scramble your attention or worse, result to poor output. If you plan to work on Task A and Task B, divide the hours you will allot for both, whether the latter or former is for the morning or the afternoon.

 

6.   Do not rush

Okay, you have a lot of tasks to perform, but there's no need to hasten some of them. The tendency of badly pushing your tasks into the finish will lead to bad output. This will appear as if you did not have time to make your performance good. You will show your boss or your teacher in such a manner that you are not taking your tasks seriously.

 

7.   Breathe and take a break

There’s nothing wrong to take a rest when you deserve it. You deserve your pillow after such a fruitful day. Include in your schedule your window breaks every daytime. It’s up to you whether you will fix it into your schedule or just anytime you want as long as you feel like you need it and you put the effort into optimizing your time. You can take a break in many ways such as eating, strolling with a friend, or anything that calms your mind and body. Stress and fatigue can be avoidable when you make the means to effectively deal with them. You are a human after all. You get tired and after a good rest, you will rejuvenate. Take care also of your health even though you are flooded with tasks. Don’t hesitate to take time to breathe and regain your energy - you will exert this to continue and move on to your next tasks.

 

8.   Give yourself an incentive

Say your momma promised to buy you a new phone after doing good in school. So you will give your best on the exam, quizzes, and assignments for excellent grades in return. Same with your goal of being vigorous by managing your time wisely, you can think of a good prize for yourself that you think you deserve.

Reward yourself after accomplishing all your tasks. If you become productive during the day, give yourself a simple treat like ice cream and pat your shoulder for a job well done. This will give you the motivation to continue overseeing your time efficiently and effectively.

 

9.   Sacrifice now, happy hour later

Sometimes, to attain our goals, we need to accept the fact that disciplining oneself requires a little sacrifice. Say tomorrow is the deadline for your project and since you wasted your time partying with your friends last week, you have no choice but to finish it. If your friends once again invited you this time, you have to decline it and prioritize the project due at hand. Remember that time-sensitive goals must always be your priority in exerting your time and energy. After submitting or presenting your project, then you are free to go hang out with your friends.

 

10.       Have a positive mindset

Believe that you will finish your tasks and that all your hard work will pay off. Envisioning yourself in worthwhile activities that consume your time will somehow drive you to take your duties at heart. They say, every day is a new day, so make it rewarding by optimizing your time. Do not let negativity ruin what you have started or what you are about to start.

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Now, you have grasped some helpful tips on time management that will be essential in balancing your work/school and personal life. In this way, you can spend more time with your family, friends, and do things you want to do. It’s your turn to execute what you have learned from this blog. Good luck!