What you should remember about time management is that it is not a goal in itself. The reason you want to manage your time better is that you want to achieve more and better goals in your life.
If you have no meaningful goals to achieve, there is no sense in pursuing various efforts to manage your time more effectively. Only when you have valuable goals that are worthy of your effort and time, you will have motivation for time management.
In this regard, you need to have acquire good goal setting skills. One of the most basic and important techniques for goal setting that are recommended by many experts is S.M.A.R.T method.
First, your goals should be Specific. Don't say, "I want to be rich." Instead, say "I want to make 100,000 dollars a year." Goals as specific as possible can work as a real motivator and help you come up with a detailed action plan and time management schedule.
Second, your goals should be Measurable. If you cannot measure your progress in getting closer to the completion of a goal, you are just like a driver going to a destination with no idea of itinerary and distance to the place. Needless to say, your travel will get you astray.
A vague plan like "working out to be healthy" cannot be measured and will not be successful. But a specific plan such as "going to the gym three times a week" will elicit concrete actions and make changes in your life.
Third, goals should be Attainable. Big dream is good thing, but you should not confuse dream with reality. For example, you can say, "I want to learn how to ride a bicycle within two weeks." This is an attainable goal. However, if you say, "I will master jumping across 100 cars with a bicycle." Well, good luck.
A goal that excites you and encourages you to stretch your ability within a reasonable difficulty and obstacles are good things and will make you grow. A goal that is simply impossible, is just impossible. Period.
Fourth, goals should be also Relevant. Goals you pursue should be in harmony with your value systems or your whole personality. If you set a goal of making 100,000 dollars and the goal can be reached only through a method that is against your value, would you do that? The choice is, of course, up to you. But goals at variance with your personality will be harmful to your life in the long run.
Fifth, goals should be time-bound. A goal with no deadline will ultimately become a dead goal. You all remember how many new year's resolutions you have made in the past and how many of them actually worked out. Maybe not many of them, I guess. One of the reasons for that is we make many goals but forget to set certain due dates for each of our goals. Without urgency created by fixed timeline, most of our efforts for goals just melt away as time goes by.
Now, this is worth repeating because it's important. Time management is not a goal. You should first have valuable and meaningful goals. Only after that, you can use various time management skills to their full potential as means for achieving the goals. So, try and set worthy goals and manage your time better to achieve those goals.
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