Page 334 - Effective Communication Soft Skills Strategies For Success by Nitin Bhatnagar, Mamta Bhatnagar

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SCHEDULING TIME

Actually, once a time-utilization problem is admitted, scheduling your time
may not be as difficult as you might think since several hours are already ‘filled’
with sleeping, eating, showering, working or classes, and other essentials. You
only have to schedule the ‘unfilled’, available hours (for college students that’s
about 10 hours per day). If you don’t plan how to use those hours, it is easy to
be lulled into watching TV, talking with friends, etc. The idea is to decide, ‘what
is the best use of my time?’. Make a list of what you need to do each week and
then, based on the time available, make a daily ‘to-be-done list’ for working on
your high priority tasks.

COMMON PROBLEMS DUE TO INEFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT OF TIME

Since a lot of people waste time there must be a lot of problems manag-
ing time. First of all, many people have little experience organizing their
lives, because parents, teachers, bosses, and friends have done it for them.
They don’t see the need for a schedule. Also, many people resent any barrier
that interferes with their doing whatever they feel like doing at the moment.
Thus, a schedule is seen as stifling by some and resisted. Planning their time
is too time-consuming for others.
Secondly, some of us are pushed by pressing needs—a need for love and
attention, a need to avoid responsibility and work, a need to believe the future
will take care of itself (So, I can do whatever I want to right now), a need to
escape real life by listening to music, watching TV, or reading a novel, and so
on. In some cases, a new determination to schedule your time will get you
going. In other cases, greater self-awareness (honestly looking at how you
really waste your time) is needed. In still other cases, it seems to be almost
impossible to become more controlled until some of the above mentioned
basic psychological needs have been satisfied or, more likely, until we realize
we are headed for failure, i.e., our life isn’t working out as we had hoped.
Many college students don’t get motivated until they flunk out and have to
work in a miserable job for a year or two.
Thirdly, as Covey, Merrill and Merrill (1994) point out, many of us spend
our days handling what appears to be ‘urgent’ problems, such as answering the
phone or mail, beating deadlines for never-read reports, attending meetings,
impressing the boss, etc. which are not in a broader sense very important or
useful. If your schedule is filled with unimportant urgencies, you won’t have
time to learn new things, to do long range planning, to be creative and origi-
nal, to do research, to exchange ideas with others, to re-think your major
objectives, to invent new opportunities, to try to prevent future problems,
to help others, and so on. These latter activities result in greater productivity
and more benefits to everyone; they are the essence of a thoughtful life. It is

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