Time and task management involves everything you need to think about and do to prioritize, plan, start, and complete daily tasks.
Time and Priority Management
Time management involves estimating how much time you have and then figuring out how to best allocate your time in order to stay within time limits/deadlines in order to achieve your goals. Kids and adults who struggle with time management often arrive late to class, practice, dinner dates, and meetings because they just “lost track of time.” For some of us, time just disappears – it was there a minute ago and now it’s gone. We are constantly trying to keep up with it but we often fail to manage it well. Many who struggle with time management find it difficult to find a planner or calendar that works for them. Time management involves a number of subskills including planning/prioritizing, task initiation, and persistence.
Prioritizing involves trying to figure out what tasks are important to complete. Because some of us pay attention to everything and it’s hard to figure out what to pay attention to, we struggle to prioritize: everything seems like it’s important all at once. As a result, students struggle to figure out what to study for tests and adults have trouble recognizing which tasks need to be completed first.
Planning and Starting Tasks
Planning is necessary to complete a task, finish a project, or reach a goal. Operating without a plan is like driving in foreign, unfamiliar territory without a map: it’s easy to get lost and you can spend a lot of valuable time driving in circles getting nowhere fast. As a result, little gets done until the deadline and then it’s done poorly.
Task initiation is the ability to begin a task without procrastinating. For those of us who struggle with this skill, our brain actually tricks us into thinking that we work best when we are under the pressure of meeting a deadline at the last-minute: stress produces adrenalin which produces the exact chemicals our brain needs to pay attention to the right thing at the right time. Unfortunately, this additional stress and adrenalin are not good for our bodies.
There are three main reasons people procrastinate: (1) we don’t expect to do well on the task or we don’t expect it to turn out too well for us (completing our taxes), (2) we don’t value the task (cleaning house), and/or (3) we find lots of other things to do besides the right thing at the right time. What are your reasons for procrastinating?
Persistence and Motivation
Persistence involves the ability to follow through to completion of a task or goal, and not being distracted by competing events. These competing activities may be good things, but they are not the things that will help an individual reach his or her goals. For example, spending time completing unfinished chores around the house is a good thing unless you really need to be finishing an important project for school or work.
Motivation and what motivates you is important to consider when thinking about starting and persisting in order to complete tasks. Are you motivated by external factors like rewards or punishment? Do internal motivators - autonomy, purpose, mastery, or relationships - drive your engagement? It is important to know what drives you to complete tasks as you strive for to achieve your goals in life.
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© 2010-2018, Monte W. Davenport, Ph.D.