Managing Time

BLOG 20/2025 DATED 12TH OCTOBER 2025

Time Management has always been a complex matter for many of us. Only few are able to organise their time and show improved performance. Those who have read Hindi know about “Kaal kare so aaj kar aaj kare so ab”  a verse by medieval age poet and philosopher Kabir Das. He was stressing upon the importance of time and urging to be ahead of time. As we move to modern systems of delivery, we observe that time has suddenly increased its importance. Modern corporates like Blinkit, Zepto etc have made time as their USP. All this require us to take our time very seriously in our day to day functions. A minute wasted can leave us behind in a competitive environment, let is be a corporate target or a student’s project assignment.

There are various reasons why a person may not be able to manage his/her time effectively and also there are equal number of different solutions. Let us discuss a few solutions here and we may adopt any one of them and see changes in our performance.

1. Sleep Properly: A good sleep of 6-7 hours refreshes our mind and body and make us ready for the day. Here not only the time of sleep but the quality of sleep is also important. Avoid using mobiles 10-15 from the sleeping time and understand thinking at the time of sleeping is not going to help. Hence leave all worries behind, once you hit the bed. Your bed and pillow should be your best friend. REMEMBER there are many who do not have beds and pillows like us. Thank almighty for that and go for your night journey.
2. Yoga/exercise: A few minutes say 30-40, given to Yoga or exercise keep us healthy physically and mentally and prepare us to resist the setbacks of the day. Someone can say that taking time for a yoga or exercise is difficult, yes sometimes it is, but not always. Try 4 days a week. START TODAY.
3. Planning & Prioritise: Entire day’s work can be scheduled and reminders to be set. One should control the work he/she is doing. Sometimes the work is decided by boss/teacher etc. in that case, plan and prioritise after getting the job from them. There are various hurdles to prioritising viz. you may keep on getting different works entire day and your priority may not work. STILL PRIORITISE. It will start working for you slowly.
4. Mobile management: We normally do not give mobiles to children as they do not know their use. In fact, most of us too do not know how to use it. Many of us spend hours together on chats, you tube etc. without any result. Allot screen time to yourself. Mobile usage must not breach the self-set limit. Mobile as entertainment unit is actually as risky as an intoxicant, and if self-time allotment is not carried out, it will fly away with all the time. Mobile is a great instrument until we lose control, and it starts using us. BEWARE.
5. One work at a time: Many of us deviate to other jobs or even fell to procrastination while doing a particular job. That need to be overcome. When you allot a time for a particular work, try not to deviate to other work or thought. Shifting from one work to other disturbs the flow of job and results into elongated times for a specific job. Specially students, must not keep on shifting from one work to another within minutes. Do JUSTICE to the work which is on your table.
6. Collaborate: Not always but collaboration with someone else who is like minded or wish to collaborate for some task, helps in reducing time to perform a job. One should be careful that by collaborating we are not wasting our time. It should be a win-win for both. Collaboration does not means simply helping others but it requires distribution of work and then HELP AND GET HELP.
7. Pomodoro: Pomodoro is a time management technique where we break a task into various small tasks and allot time for that and then take a break, before again starting it. For example we break a job into 4 parts. 1^st cycle may consists of 30 minutes of continuous work and then a break of 5 minutes. Like that 4 cycles are repeated in 2 hours 20 minuts to finish that job. The 30 minutes time can be reduced or increased depending upon individual’s level of concentration. If we do this regularly, these 30 minutes time slowly increases and we learn to concentrate for longer times. REWARD yourself for the increased concentration.
8. Increase discretionary time: Dr William Oncken & Donald L Wass wrote in Harvard Business Review 1974, that there are 3 types of time i.e Boss imposed time, system-imposed time and self-imposed time. Self-imposed time has the component of discretionary time and it is this part of time that one should work as probably we can’t do much on boss-imposed time and system-imposed time. Under self-imposed time sometimes we accept the work from peers or even subordinates and that eat up our discretionary time. Though collaboration saves time but one should be smart enough to see that self-time is not wasted while helping or supporting others. It is necessary to act on the jobs that are in our hand before taking further from others. It is specially important for those who are in managerial positions leading a team of subordinates. ENSURE that your subordinates learn to do their works themselves. Empower them to deliver rather than spoon feeding. This will enhance your discretionary time and you can come with better solutions.
9. Namaz: Last but not the least, those who follow Islamic belief system can also take Namaz seriously as it will also give breaks, increase concentration and bring in discipline in day-to-day work that may help in better time management. Sometimes even SPRITUALITY come to our rescue in difficult situations.

These are not the only methods to manage the time effectively, one can find a technique that suits him/her best. Depending upon the task a combination of methods can be applied for the desired result. Think, Plan & most importantly ACT.

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

– Abraham Lincoln

 “If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.”

– Bruce Lee