TIME MANAGEMENT

Definition.
According to Cardona, P and Wilkison, H. (2009). Managing time well is a basic
competence for a manager and for any human being. The management of our time is
directly related to the efficiency and quality of our life and, indirectly, to our personal
and environmental happiness. If we want to lead our own lives, it is essential to clearly
define our priorities to know how to distinguish and align what we want, should do,
and end up doing it effectively.
Perhaps, before starting to manage time, you should reflect on how to distribute it
appropriately according to an order of priorities. That is, knowing where and how to
dedicate our effort according to what we want to achieve. We assume that we have it
but, in practice, we do not act according to that order of priorities. Our inner feeling of
dissatisfaction is usually related to that incoherence.

We may be working from morning to night and achieving success, but are we sure we
are in the race we want to run? Because if we discover, half a lifetime later, that it is
not our career, we will have wasted a lot of time. It is the same feeling as having
painted the wrong wall with great care and effort.
We tend to assume that we are clear about what we want. We have some principles
deep in our conscience and we think we respect them. For example, we may have the
underlying idea that for us money is not the most important thing in life. That for us,
family and friends are the most important thing, or that we value learning more than
social recognition. It is enough to stop and reflect for a few moments in silence to see
that, in practice, we are not so clear.
We all carry within us the need to leave a worthwhile legacy and to be respected for
being competent and upright people. But that cannot be achieved if it is not built in
that direction. Sometimes we sow something and then we are surprised to reap what
we sowed and not what we would like to reap. Therefore, it is important that we
consider what we want to do with our lives and, therefore, with our time, and how we
are going to do it.

The time management process

According to Cardona, P and Wilkison, H. (2009). The time management process is
made up of different phases: what we want to achieve (mission); how we are going to
achieve it (planning) how we are going to put it into practice (execution) and periodic
review of our trajectory to readjust our time management, perhaps redefining what
we want to achieve (our mission).
1. What we want: mission
The first step in managing our time is knowing what we want to achieve in life,
where we want to go and why or for what purpose.
At a professional level, the question of “what do we want to achieve” must be
linked to the question of “what are we good at”, because, if we are especially
valuable for something, it will be in that field where we can make a unique
contribution with added value. It is not always easy to know what we are good
at. As we are developing beings, we can be valuable for something that we
have not yet developed.
Our strengths are what can lead us to success and, above all, they are what
make us contribute something that has added value. It is what will result in our
best development, and it is the best way we have to contribute and leave a
legacy. Our role as managers is one of the most important, but not the only
one. We are also spouses, parents, friends, neighbors, members of some
association or community and citizens. At all these levels, we have to define
what we want to achieve, what is important to us and what we can contribute.

2. How are we going to achieve it: planning

There are three elements that can help us plan what we want to achieve, so
that our time management is consistent with what we have decided we want,
according to our mission.
A) Visualize. Let's close our eyes. Let's relive in memory all the details of our
day today: phone calls, answers, gestures and expressions of a collaborator
who irritates us by doing so, we detect what activity or event makes us lose
our plan.
We know how to predict circumstances that will most likely be repeated.
So, let's make the effort to visualize how we should start the day, how long
we should react to the collaborator who irritates us.
The questions that we must ask ourselves to become aware of the situation
in its context and visualize what is the best distribution of our time are:
What is the best use of the correct thing that I should do now according to
the course that I have set? Given the speed and pressure of our day, it is
easy for us to mentally disconnect from our compass of priorities, and,
almost without realizing it, we make decisions that go in the opposite
direction. That is why we must reserve a space a day, even if it is only
twenty minutes, to reflect and thus reorder, also in practice, our priorities.
 b. set goals
We must set goals that help us advance in the different roles. For example,
in our personal mission statement, within our role as managers, we had
proposed competent professionals, recognized for our good work and
honesty. We wanted to expand the team and develop our people. To do
this, some concrete and objective goals that could help us would be: attend
a training course on the market every six months; prepare with a written
script and half an hour / an hour in advance of important meetings, and do
coa chin of our two closest collaborators. In our social role, we wanted to
rethink the way we contribute to the community in a period of special
family burden. Possible goals: continue supporting important projects, but
giving up honorary positions that force us to attend too many events.

c. Distinguish between what is urgent and what is important

In putting the different goals into practice, it can help us to create a matrix
that distributes our activities according to their urgency and importance.
Non-urgent and non-important activities are easily detectable and, once
selected, it is a matter of making the firm decision to eradicate them. The
activities framed within the “urgent but not important” quadrant are a call
to attention to how much time they consume us and how we could
delegate them to have more time available in other more interesting
quadrants. Activities framed within the “urgent and important” quadrant
should occupy an important part of our agenda. However, if we do almost
all of our activities with convergence, something is wrong here: either we
are not in some extraordinary situation such as opening a business or other
similar circumstances. Lastly, the activities in the “not urgent but
important” quadrant are those on which we should reflect more. Topics
that we mentally identify as priorities are usually placed here, as part of
what we really want to achieve in life.

c. Specify times
We tend to be unobjective with our time. When we assign start and end
times to each activity in our agenda, we don't know for sure how long they
take us. We sin by excess and by default, depending on the culture and
personality of each one. Latin cultures tend to be optimistic, unlike those of
northern Europe. If we have the feeling that we are not achieving anything,
perhaps we are being too optimistic with the distribution of our time and
we need to rethink it. Time can only stretch so far. We may want to cover
too much and end up broken. We have to know how much time each thing
we have in hand takes us and then decide what to do.

3. Execution of what was planned

Real life only adjusts to the planned one by exception. There are always new
events, or unexpected circumstances or challenges. Managing this gap between
 what is planned and life itself requires flexibility and realism. The essential
thing is to maintain balance between our priorities. We must assume that we
do not achieve everything and we only assume it when we respect what is truly
a priority.
Those who achieve what they set out to do are usually people who have been
faithful to what they one day decided they wanted to achieve, to the
commitments they made, especially with themselves. It takes a lot of courage
to remain faithful in day-to-day decisions to what in theory we have decided is
our personal mission, our roles, our goals.
When we have mentally come to the conclusion that certain acquired basic
priorities or responsibilities are the most important thing in our life, we must
provide space to ensure that they are not neglected.

Review and adjustment of the planned

According to Cardona, P and Wilkison, H. (2009). Time management is a habit in
constant exercise, which requires adjustments, readjustments. One does not get
ordained just by trying. It is not possible to adapt the real times to the mission that we
have proposed in one day. When we feel that we are not moving forward, we have to
reflect on what expectations we had. Perhaps they were unattainable and unrealistic,
being too ambitious or too immediate.
The experiences gained over time can help us review what was planned to adjust it to
a new plan, more realistic and in line with our personal circumstances. Therefore, it is
convenient to review our trajectory, stop and consider what our experience is telling
us.

Time perception and management

According to Martínez, C (2003). Time is a scarce resource. Everyone has the same
time of the same number of hours a day, twenty-four, no more, no less, to carry out
their professional tasks and dedicate time to their personal and family life.
Businessmen and women frequently complain that they do not have time to carry out
their usual tasks, that time escapes them without really knowing why.
The difference between managers who have time and those who always lack it is that
the former know or have learned to manage it and the latter have not been able to
establish an order of priorities and assign them incorrectly, not delegating those that
are less important. .
A manager who wants to manage his time well must use an ideal and effective work
method, and distribute it in the most productive way possible; That is, it has to be
properly self-managed. To do this, you must control your life and not be an instrument
of your professional and personal environment; In short, you have to control yourself.

Time use analysis

According to Martínez, C (2003). To analyze the use made of time, we must examine
what activities and how it is used, without forgetting those non-productive activities
(distractions, interruptions...). Only when you know how your time is being used can
you judge whether it is being spent properly.
To check the use made of time, you must keep a record, and write down for a period,
say a week, all the activities that are carried out and the time they are spent.

Activities and Habits

According to Martínez, C (2003). Every person who performs executive functions
carries out a series of correlative and interrelated activities every day. Control of these
functions will lead to mastery of self-management and better use of time.