Time Management: Boost Your Productivity & Reduce Stress
Out of 44% depression cases, 41% of adults suffer from stress due to a lack of time management.
Time management is a serious issue to address for human productivity and reduce stress in employees and adults. The causes of lack of time management vary from person to person, but its impacts are similar to guilt, anxiety, and often unprofessionalism.
People assume that they have insufficient time to do the things they want to do. Poor time management makes them think of themselves as too busy. It also makes them feel “unproductive” and results in stress and failure to cultivate productivity.
Consequences of Poor Time Management:
Among several causes of ill time management, the consequences of the lack of time management are:
- Exhaustion in attitude
- Sever decline in concentration to focus on a particular task
- Increases distraction in human’s behavior
- Lack of sleep
- Creativity block
Two crucial factors that decline the proper time management are following:
Lock Up Instant Gratification Monkey:
Most of the time, our focused tasks demand our proper attention and time. In contrast, people tend to instant gratification monkey that provides a short-term pleasure, but it diverts from the main objective. Over time, this instant gratification monkey wreaks inadequate time management and yielded stress, anxiety, and guilt, to not accomplish the core goal.
For instance, reading clickbait headline articles, scrolling social media apps, and watching random YouTube videos is a source of pleasure-seeking, but it seriously damages the schedule and routine. These short intervals take a massive chunk of a day that otherwise might have been productive.
A balance between Life and Work:
Another significant factor to consider is to draw a balanced line between life and goals. The disruption between these two factors and tending towards one side also bring stress and depression.
Spending much time in social circles can also dismantle productivity in daily routine. On the other side, staying stick with work can seriously harm mental health. So, a productive and decisive borderline can boost workability and give specific time to balance out life and work.
It is, however, suggested that people must contribute the free time in their life to their family, loved ones, or their physical health. It can be more effective than spending on the digital world.
Tips to Cope Procrastination:
These two factors explain the lack of time management that wreaks havoc in our daily lives, and we should decline them. Here are two vital model frameworks, achievable and realistic, that would help manage time, reduce stress and multiply productivity.
Eisenhower Matrix:
In a best-selling book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, the author Stephen R. Covey shares this module that importantly focuses on prioritizing the tasks.
A former army general and statesman, Dwight David Eisenhower, introduced this module. This model sharpens the ability to organize the day's varying important, not-important, urgent, and non-urgent tasks.
- Important & Urgent: It should be done at the moment as it qualifies both qualities of being indispensable and urgent. Its vitality is evident.
- Important & Not Urgent: This task is important, but you are not committed to doing it urgently. So, it should follow the schedule. This point is highly significant and demands proper planning to accomplish. Because, at the moment, it is not urgent, but it will be on the Urgent to-do list soon.
- Not Important & Urgent: As it is not important but only urgent so you should try to find someone who can execute for you.
- Not Important & Not Urgent: If a task is neither essential nor urgent, you should eliminate this task from your To-do list. It does not add value to your day in one way or another.
Pomodoro Technique:
A 20th century time management tool introduced by Francesco Cirillo is still handy to track daily chores. Unlink Eisenhower Matrix, Pomodoro Technique focuses on minor tasks to encounter procrastination and distractions in our daily routine.
- First, choose a task that you want to work on
- Put an alarm or a reminder of 25 minutes
- Start working on the goal till the alarm rings
- After this, take a 3 to 5 minutes break
- Repeat this step 4 times
- Upon successful completion, take a long break (15minutes)
This technique is quite helpful whether you are working on your college/university assignment or even want to exercise with a strict pattern. It can significantly boost your productivity.
Bottom Line:
Time management directly affects your stress reduction. Many times people waste time due to stress and do not know where to start. To this aspect, prioritizing your tasks and carrying them out with tracking to avoid distraction is useful. Similarly, you must keep the factors balanced or deconstruct that cause the lack of time management.
