Are you managing time effectively? If not, here’s how you can do so

Have you ever found yourself in the ordeal of having to finish a week's worth of work in a day? The onslaught of endless deadlines is something every student or working person is accustomed to, but are we handling them efficiently?

In today's fast-paced and hectic world, many struggle to keep up with their myriad of responsibilities. Hence, efficient time management has become a necessity.

One way to manage time is by gamifying the process. You can create an Excel sheet and a list of activities you want to get done within the day or week. Each time you get done with an activity, colour that activity row green. At the end of the day or week, you can see how many activities you finished versus how many you slacked off on. Based on that, you may grant yourself some reward.

However, as this is fully self-enforced, some may find themselves losing the willpower to continue with it. In such cases, you may bring in another party, maybe a friend or family member, to overlook the sheet and the reward, and maybe you can do the same for them, turning it into a symbiotic activity.

Speaking of other parties, they are an irreplaceable part of time management. As social creatures, we humans aren't meant to work alone, and that's why it's a good idea to ask for help from time to time. You can ask your colleague to fill in for you for a day, your sibling to do the household chores, or your friend to fetch something important. There is no shame in asking for such help, granted you're not taking advantage of people's kindness and reciprocating said kindness back to them. This will allow you some much-needed breathing space, which you can use to re-energise or catch up.

Finally, two of the most important aspects of time management are leisure and routine. 

Breaks shouldn't be seen as a detriment to time management, but rather as an essential part of it. However, the catch is they're most beneficial when they're intentional and pre-planned, and that is where routine comes in. They allow you to intentionally a lot of time wherever you see fit in advance, instead of having to engage in the daily toil of figuring out what to do and when to do them. If leisure is incorporated into one's routine and followed through with, it will remove the guilt we sometimes feel when taking a break.

Hustle culture has convinced many that working yourself to the bone is the key to a successful and happy life. But it couldn't be further from the truth, and striving for a harmonious work-life balance is a much healthier approach. That is why effectively managing time should be a priority for us all, lest we find ourselves in the clutches of a lifeless grind.

Rafid Khandaker is a student at North South University.