“The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.” ~ Michael Altshuler.

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The good news is that time is not standing still on my side; which could only mean one thing – I’m alive! The bad news is that I’m definitely not the pilot. Or, if I am, I’m a very bad pilot.

I’ve never been good at managing time. Some days just go by without me knowing what happened to them. And there really is nothing as dangerous as not knowing what you did with your time.

How does one manage time? I don’t know the answer to this yet. I guess it is our responsibility as people to teach ourselves how to manage time. Or do we learn it from society, friends and family?

Is time management something we learn in universities and colleges? Or is it something that we are born with inherently? I mean, how is it that other people manage their time so efficiently yet I fail to do this? Is it something that I lack, maybe? Something I wasn’t born with; a birth defect, maybe?

I don’t know whether it’s because I don’t give myself enough time to study, to prepare for class, but I seem to be floating in time, doing too many things all at once. The repercussion of this attitude is that I don’t finish things that I start. In simple terms, I lack focus!

I don’t know of any university that teaches a student how to focus; how to manage their time properly? So, I guess, those who know how to manage their time have learnt to do so. They did not suck it from their mother’s breasts nor were they born with it.

I read a very interesting article on this subject on the Harvard Business Review website. The article, of course, refers to the work environment. However, what is important, for purposes of this entry, is that the writer of the article, Maura Thomas, makes a bold statement to the effect that “time management skills” are not necessarily what workers in the business environment need. This is largely due to the fact that times are changing.

She argues that marking deadlines of important projects on the calendar and having a list of “A, B, C” priorities may have sufficed in the past, but such tactics aren’t up to the demands of the modern workplace.”

This is particularly an eye-opener for me, especially because I had believed that planning and prioritization of certain tasks helps. But, certainly, it hasn’t been so effective for me.

It’s easy to get distracted from those tasks and end up doing something totally different. There’s Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms that easily lure us from the task at hand; the “thieves of time.” The two of them are notorious for distracting us from priority tasks. We leave assignments and studying at the last minute and spend most our time on social media.

Thomas writes “knowledge workers spend their days in a state of constant distraction and task switching.” According to her, this leads to perpetual stress and being busy instead of being productive.

Being busy instead of being productive, I read this part again and again. It seems to sum up the conundrum I have with managing my time. I’m busy, but, at the end of the day, I don’t see the products of my busyness. The work on my desk seems to be piling up every day instead of decreasing. The 24 hours of each day gone to waste. I have nothing to show for my time; no tasks achieved, there are still chapters to be read and summarised. Instead, I have liked pictures, shared and commented and retweeted posts on social media. These don’t contribute to my marks nor do they help with my assignments.

Thomas’s article suggests three things to be done in order to work effectively and efficiently. But there’s only one that speaks to me directly. She suggests that instead of time management we should rather focus on improving our “attention management skills.” This is to say we should instead work on making sure that our attention on the task on hand is not distracted by mundane things like social media or chilling with friends.

ZZ xx

Dish it: do you manage your time well?