Manage time wisely to attain goals

Your calendar is filling up. You have started new projects and are pushing for completion on many others. You are beginning to feel frustration and fatigue because you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.

If all likelihood you aren’t coping with stress because you haven’t learned to budget your time.

There are three steps to time management that I believe are the most important:

Keeping an accurate record of daily activities.
Prioritizing tasks and goals.
Eliminating time wasters.


One of the easiest ways to keep an accurate record of each day is to carry a 3-by-5 card or a small notebook where you can write down every activity of your day in the order in which it was performed. At the end of the week, review the activities. Then order these activities in terms of your own goals.

After establishing a pattern for your goals and commitments, learn to say no when you feel new tasks will be an encroachment on your time. Remember that leaving no time for yourself may eliminate time when creativity would arise and that lack of leisure time can increase stress.

Secondly, you need to prioritize and analyze your tasks and activities. Maintain some flexibility for unforeseen events and circumstances. Rank the tasks and events in order of job or career importance, family necessities and self-serving goals.

The third step is eliminating time wasters. To operate more efficiently, review the following lists of situations and habits that can prevent you from gaining the most from hours of each day.

• Visitation time. Too much time on the phone, yielding to too many telephone interruptions and stretching each conversation beyond the necessary number of minutes can add up to several hours per day with phone in hand. With proper organization and/or delegating the routine call to others, one call can often take the place of several. Seeing too many unannounced visitors or co-workers who simply want to make conversation also can cut into time you have charted for action. Learn to be brief while remaining pleasant and friendly.

• Procrastination and indecisiveness. Once a given task has been assigned or accepted, do it and get it off your list. Don’t waste further time deciding if it should be done.

• Lack of organization. If papers, books, telephone and needed information are in place you can save time each day. Having to stop and look for articles wastes time.

• Good communication. By giving instructions that are easily understood, repetitive dialogue can be eliminated. Good listening skills are important for receiving instructions. Frustrations and stress arise when tasks must be repeated for lack of understanding.

• Daydreaming and preoccupation. Although creative thinking can be rewarding, time on task is needed to complete activities. Time set aside for leisure and solitude produces creativity. Daydreaming and never putting the dream into action is the time waster.

Organizing your time efficiently – an area over which you can exert control – can result in more time for recreation and aid in achieving a sense of better order in your life. Change your thoughts on time management from, “I don’t have the time,” to “I may need to rearrange my time to accomplish my goals.” With practice it can be done.

Harold H. LeCrone, Jr., Ph.D. Copyright 1989