Why is time management important? It’s important because if you manage your time well, you can manage your life well. Let me explain…
I met Tanya in first grade. She was one of the nicest people I had ever met. Unfortunately, she was also one of the slowest learners I had ever met. School was hard for her. Really hard.
While she was bad at school, she was an amazing athlete. But to play sports, you have to keep your GPA up. So Tanya was forced to get better at school if she wanted to continue playing sports. More importantly, she had to get good at managing her time. Why? Because while most kids had homework and then a ton of time to play outside or watch TV, Tanya had soccer practice every day and then homework, which always took her twice as long as the “average” student.
On the other hand, I also knew a guy named Ace. He was one of the most intelligent people I had ever met. Ace never studied for tests, and he always aced them. He knew complicated subjects before we had ever been exposed to them in class. At times, I swore he knew more than our teachers.
I lost touch with both of these people as we went to different schools. However, years later, on a warm day Southern Californian day, as I was about to graduate high school, I opened the newspaper, and low and behold, I saw Tanya’s beaming face. She was featured in the newspaper because she had been awarded a full-ride scholarship due to having one of the highest GPAs in her class.
What happened to Ace? Honestly, I’m not sure. But I’ll tell you this, I didn’t see his face in the newspaper, and I don’t think he was awarded a full-ride scholarship despite his innate intelligence.
Is time management important?
Time management is important because if you can learn to manage your time well, as Tanya did, just about anything can be accomplished regardless of personal or professional obstacles you may face.
But let’s go deeper…
What is time management?
To determine what time management is, it’s helpful to break down its components.
What is time?
To start, we can ask ourselves, “What is time?”
A: Time is a scarce resource.
Time is a scarce resource. In fact, I would argue that time is the most scarce resource any of us has. It may seem infinite because we rarely think about it, but each of us has a finite number of hours to live.
A: The great equalizer
Time is also the great equalizer. While everyone is born with a different amount of privilege, money, and tangible resources, none of us knows exactly how much time we will be on this planet, and each of us only has 24 hours in a day.
What is management?
At its core, management is about getting things done, going from a current state to a different future state. It’s about leveraging and controlling resources (time, people, money). As I write this, I’m having the epiphany that, at its core, all management is about time management. Because when we hire, manage, and pay people, were trading one resource (money) for their time. When we pay someone money, we generally do that to save ourselves time. At the end of the day, all valuable and scarce resources have some correlation with time.
Why is time management important?
What is your life, if not an accumulation of moments? Time management is the management of the moments of your life. If you can manage your moments well, then you can strategically manage your life and create the life and the outcomes you want.
It’s About Taking Command of Your Life
Time management is important because it’s about taking command of your life. If no one is managing your time, then no one is managing your life. If that’s the case, there are basically two outcomes that can occur. 1. Your life will aimlessly drift to some unknown destination that may or may not be where you wanted it to end up. Or 2. Someone else will dictate your life for you.
Manage Your Time Well, Manage your Life Well
Eating a five-course meal of mediocre quality is going to leave you underwhelmed. The same is true of a life filled with mediocre moments. Managing your time well and filling it with exceptional moments is the recipe for an extraordinary life.
Time Management Helps You Achieve Your Goals
A foundational component of time management is having clarity on what your goals are. Knowing what you want to use your time and, ultimately, your life for helps make your goals actually materialize.
Time Management is Stress Management
We live in an abundant world, but with more “stuff” comes more overwhelm. Part of time management is focusing on what exactly you want to use your time for. With the clarity of knowing your goals and managing your time to help reach them, stress is managed and relieved because we can easily filter what’s important and ignore the rest. When people don’t have clarity around their goals, it’s easy to feel that everything is important and then be overwhelmed by stress.
If You Can Manage Your Time, You Can Manage Other Resources
As I mentioned before, time is the most scarce resource in the world. If you can master time management, all other resources will be easier for you to manage. Mastering time management can have powerful benefits, such as giving you the ability to obtain:
- Faster Results
- Better Results
- Increased Confidence
- More Opportunities
- More Freetime
Time Management Strategies
If you’re looking to master your time, here are my top three tips:
- Have Clarity on Your Goals
- Prioritize
- Avoid Multitasking
I’ll go deeper into each of these topics in the coming weeks.
Frequently Asked Questions Related to Time Management
Here are some of the most frequently asked questions about time management.
Why is time management important for students?
Students have to juggle multiple classes, assignments, priorities, and extracurricular activities. As students graduate into higher grades and college, the assignments become more time-consuming and complex. Time management is important for students because it gives them the tools to juggle their ever-expanding list of priorities. It’s also important because if they can practice and ultimately master time management at an early age, it will make their personal and professional life much easier.
Why is time management important in the workplace?
Workplaces can be stressful. There are many tasks and projects to be completed, and deadlines are often tight. Time management gives employees the foundational tools to juggle various priorities and successfully do their jobs.
TL;DR
- Time management is important because if you can learn to manage your time well, you can accomplish just about anything.
- Time well managed is a life well lived.
- Managing your time is key to managing your stress.
- A foundational tool for success is managing your time well.
