How to Use Your Time Effectively

Time management is a core fundamental of personal development. Learn how to get the most out of your time each day and how to effectively use personal time management.
If you live or work in one of the busiest cities in the world like New York City, you will see people who are walking purposefully fast towards their destination. It seems like time is always of the essence, every minute counts, and everyone is always in a rush. When you see a person who is rushing off somewhere, there are two possible scenarios. First, that individual could be rushing off because of being late - or second, it could be because that person wants to have plenty of time to arrive to that destination. If you want to be the type of person who can have that luxury to get to an appointment with plenty of time to spare, rather than always rushing off due to lateness, then you need to learn how to use your time effectively. This is where personal time management comes in.

What is Personal Time Management?

First, here is a quick definition of personal time management. This term refers to the efficient and effective use of your personal time - to meet your professional and personal goals.

Take your typical workday as an example. On the start of a workweek, do you usually put off creating difficult reports until later in the week, or do you deal with them immediately? When the deadline for a project nears, do you find yourself dealing with more work than you can handle or are you always right on schedule?

Your answers to these questions would be a reflection of whether you are applying the basic rules of personal time management or not. One of the rules that you need to learn about in personal time management is learning how to prioritize.

When working on a project, you need to deal with the difficult tasks first - so that you will have plenty of time later to revise or make any adjustments on it. Knowing which issues to deal with first, and setting your long-term and short-term goals is part of effective personal time management.