6 Vital Time Management Skills

Posted on October 22, 2017 by Meena Fonseca, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.

1. Self-Awareness
Every person in this world is unique and you will rarely find two people working the same way. We all have our preferences and that’s completely fine. We all are motivated by different things and that’s also fine. Until unless you are happy with the way you work it’s completely fine what motivates you or what time you prefer to work or in how many hours you complete it.
It simply implies that when you are aware of your preferences you are able to take the best time management skills and tailor them to your unique needs.
2. Self-Motivation
There are days when you are fueled with energy and then there are days where you don’t wish like doing a thing. On days when you lack motivation there is not much anyone can do to get you going than yourself. If you have improved self-awareness you would know when you need a motivational boost.
Also, when you move up the hierarchy ladder there might not be many you would be accountable to. You will be responsible for your own results and if you lack on this essential time management skill you will soon start experiencing huge amount of stress.
3. Prioritization
It may sound strange at first but when you look deep into it you might get what I’m saying here. Most of us attempt to prioritize items that are on our task list but the fact is these items should not feature in our task list in the first place.
Prioritization should not be about getting more work done, but should be about how to finish off the work. It should be about how to eliminate the task you should not be performing. Once you know which tasks do not need your attention than you can focus on the tasks that need attention.
Prioritization is one of the most misunderstood task management skills and when you do understand its true meaning your time management skill will improve radically.
4. Questioning and Challenging
If you really wish to work on your time management then you must be willing to challenge anything or anyone that does not meet your standards. This begins with the tasks assigned to you. If you feel you are not the right person to do it then you must raise the issue. Challenging does not mean you raise your voice at every action but at those where you know this is not your area of work. You’ll begin to see a change in pattern and reduced work load because quite often people delegate work because it is convenient for them.
It’s again about prioritization and questioning and challenging are a part of it.
5. Outsourcing Tasks
Just as others delegate work to you there might be times when you do the same. One of the greatest time management skills is to know when you are not the right person to perform a particular task and delegate it to the right person.
Delegation does not mean just assigning the task to some other person, it means that the person to whom the task is being delegated should be made aware of all the responsibilities and outcome expected of the task.
6. Stress Management
Work is always followed by pressure and if you use it wisely pressure could be a motivator. But if the amount of pressure increases so does the stress and that is not a good thing at all. Your mind, body and soul all begin to suffer when you are under stress and in the long term they can cause mental or physical health problems. But before you reach that state you would experience a negative impact on all and any work you perform.
When you are stressed you have many things on your mind and it becomes impossible to focus on the task at hand and even the simplest of task takes hours or even days to be completed resulting in backlog of work.
Time management and stress management are entwined and both allow you to understand that they can be worked on better only when you prevent the problem that is on its way rather than wait for the problem to occur and then work on it
To improve your time management skills you need to proactively work on your stress managements skills as well.
To get best possible results from your life time management is essential and with improved time management skills every aspect of your life will start showing improvement. Start by working on one skill at a time and see for yourself the effect it shows on your performance. Get started on your journey to high productivity.