(13 Matters) How to manage time better?

If you think running out of time because of odd jobs, can't say no, boredom, etc., the following matters can help you to manage your time better:

Setting goals for our life is necessary to manage time efficiently. Because when you don’t have goals, you don’t know how you can continue on the road.

So, how to set a goal correctly? How to apply after setting a goal?

1. Be alone with yourself. If you don’t think about the purposes, goals, and life’s meaning, you need to spend time with yourself alonely. You can start by finding a silent place to think.
2. Think about your experiences. What were you busy with before? How did you spend your time before? What did you do correctly? What kind of success have you had? Remembering the simplest experiences will also renew one's self-confidence, so you can write them down somewhere. Past experience can include: learning to drive, winning a medal, having a job, winning college, graduating high school.
3. Think about what you want and what motivates you. What are the things you don't know how to spend your time while working? Drawing pictures, playing sports, writing code, writing books, singing.
4. Set measurable, realistic and clear goals based on your motivations and interests. There are important steps to take in setting the right goal. Like setting a deadline, setting goals that can be done. Implementing an unrealistic goal is often disappointing. Of course, that doesn't mean we shouldn't set big goals.
5. Take action to achieve your goals. You have a goal of learning an instrument. You need to think, research, and plan what you can do to implement your goal, then take action. Which instrument do I want to learn? To what extent will I learn? Where can I learn? How long will it take me? With whom will I learn? How long will it take to estimate? With questions like these, you can plan your goal and take action.
6. Share your ideas with others. You can want to share your ideas with your close circle which is family members, friends, or social media followers. The feedback can help to grow yourself.
7. Reward your achievements. You set a goal and successfully advance it by the date you set. Congratulating yourself secretly :), rewarding yourself will motivate you to pursue new goals.

Time is used to achieve a specific purpose. Eating, drinking water, reading, watching TV, thinking, working, writing, and surfing social media. Most of us do not plan and analyze our seemingly trivial works and habits, and here the problem begins. For example, when you check how much time you spend on your phone, you may be in for a little shock.

Habits happen at certain frequencies. Of course, someone who has acquired the habit of exercising for 10 minutes every day will not be the same as someone who is inactive every day and does not get up from their seat. The most deplorable thing is that habits take effect over the years.

If bad habits are not replaced with good ones, they will cause big problems in the long run, so it is necessary to act immediately and focus on this issue. On how to build habits, this article may help you:

It is very closely related to the topic of goal setting that I just talked about. Making use of free time. When there is no goal, how we manage our time will not have any meaning, so we are more likely to waste our time with vain work. Surfing social media for no reason can be a good example of this from today.

The following can be done to fill the spare time:

1. Setting goals, planning.
2. Working with a calendar or agenda.
3. Managing habits.

The problem of focusing, which has increased in recent years, also undermines us in time management. So much so that a study conducted; shows that 50% of employees are interrupted by their phones during work, and it takes 23 minutes and 15 seconds to fully regain focus after a distracting action. [2]

When we consider the statistics, we can realize how important it is to save time due to focusing and distraction problems. Therefore, learning to focus will also be useful in time management.

Over the past few years, I've experienced the importance of keeping an agenda. When I kept an agenda, I had the opportunity to see how I spent my time and how much I wasted, which allowed me to control my time.

You can use notebooks as an agenda or you can use a digital agenda. I would like to write an article about what should be considered when keeping an agenda and how to keep an agenda. I can add it here when I write it. For the sake of not prolonging the article, I will not go into details for now.

Using a calendar is another recommendation. When no calendar is used, there will often be confusion in time management. You don't want to have a meeting scheduled for that date while you have your exam.

Are you available tonight, right? Hmm yes :/

The inability to say no can be defined as the rejection of the other party's request on an issue that the person does not want and knows will make him/her unhappy. Many of us experience this problem from time to time. Naturally, when this problem is not resolved, it is wasting a great deal of our time. Learning to say no is one of the important steps that can be taken in time management.

Our time is stolen by many distractors. Social media, friend environment, bad habits, environment, and unhealthy conditions are some of them. These issues that exploit our time differ from person to person. You can make a short analysis and determine where you are wasting your time, and then you can draw a route to get rid of them.

You may have noticed that many of the titles are related to each other. Working for long periods and not taking breaks can lead to problems such as trouble focusing, distraction, or adversely affecting physical and mental health. We have discussed this issue separately in many topics.

Taking short breaks during work has positive effects such as resting the mind and body and increasing focus. Don't forget to include breaks in your work.

A study conducted by Darius Foroux found that salaried employees procrastinate between 1-4 hours a day at about 88%. [1] The problem of procrastination, called procrastination, is one of the time killers and depressants. You can find my article on the subject here:

With the internet and digitalization, many mobile/desktop applications and websites were born. You can find hundreds of applications in time management, planning and calendar areas. You can speed up your work and save time by trying these tools.

There are many techniques that can help directly or indirectly in time management. Pomodoro, Kanban, Eisenhower matrix, SWOT analysis are some of them.

Since they show different approaches, I recommend that you try these methods and incorporate the most appropriate ones into your life.

You can check out my articles about Pomodoro and SWOT analysis:

Can you take on every task? If your answer is yes, you are wasting enough time. Delegating your tasks to others when appropriate not only saves time but also allows you to direct your focus to the right things.

Your time doesn't matter much when you have health problems. You planned all your time. However, when you have an illness, all your plans are disrupted and canceled.

If you want to save your time and use and manage your time well, you will need to take care of your physical and mental health.

Time is one of the most valuable assets we have. When we think that every person has equal time slots, we can realize how important it is to use time efficiently. I have shared with you my experience in time management, which I have been working on for a long time by trial/error method, within the scope of my research.

So, what are your time management problems? How did you come up with solutions to these problems? Do not forget to share your views. See you in new articles.

1. https://thecreativeshour.com/procrastination-facts-and-stats/
2. Workplace Distractions Statistics 2022: Problems and Solutions | TeamStage
3. Chat GPT - Help was received on punctuation, spelling rules, and exchange of ideas.