TIME MANAGEMENT

INTRODUCTION
You must have heard the stories from many people that as soon as I have more time, I shall enjoy life, buy a new house, publish a book, memorize the Quran, will give more time to the family members. In most cases, these "wishes" are not fulfilled. Have you ever thought why? Majority of us will state that they are very busy and do not have much time to carry out all the necessary activities. This is where time management comes into play. Proper utilization of time and energies to achieve your -goals and dreams in life & enjoy them without over taxing your self emotionally and physically.

SIGNIFICANCE OF TIME
Time is the most valuable asset. It has to be utilized properly on the spot because it cannot be stopped or stored or retrieved. It should be remembered that time management is the KEY to your success in this life as well as in the hereafter. Management experts state that the most valuable commodity in the World is time. If you cannot utilize this commodity properly then you cannot do any thing properly or efficiently. Problem is not lack of time but how to utilize time effectively. Everyone from a King to a labor has exactly 24 hours per day. It should be noted that about 50 % of our time is already scheduled or not under our controlled i.e. sleeping, eating, personal cleaning and praying require about 12 hours daily. Therefore, it is very important to utilize the other 12 hours effectively. Some people make a lot of contributions, publish books, deliver lectures, participate in the politics and others do not even perform their normal 8 hours duty properly. The main reason for more contributions is better utilization of time.

OBJECTIVES OF TIME MANAGEMENT
Understand importance & value of time.
Define and identify important issues and goals.
Establish priorities of the goals and have the will to carry them out.
Review & assess utilization of time.
Organize yourself and plan your time.
Recognize that not EVERYTHING can be controlled and completed. However a number of issues can be controlled and successfully completed.
Work on the items / issues that can be done and do not run around the impossible tasks.
Make your life MEANINGFUL and controllable rather than just go by the wind.
Control your own time & eliminate the time WASTER activities.
Develop the habits and approaches to utilize the time in a better way.
Teach OTHERS how to utilize their time efficiently. This activity is important because other people will then not waste your time.
GOALS AND PRIORITIES
Have you ever set the goals for your life? Have you ever written down your goals? Can you visualize them? What do you want to achieve? It should be noted that without clear goals, it is impossible to manage time properly. Without clear or explicit goals, you will drift from one activity to another activity achieving very little.

WHY WE ARE NOT SUCCESSFUL OR WHY WE ARE NOT HAPPY?
The answer to this question is most of us do not know what they want. They would not even realize if their missions or goals are fulfilled. Usually people live in a dreamland with hopes, wishes and desires but these emotional items cannot be the goals or objectives. Goals are those, which are clear, visualizable and attainable within a reasonable time period. Right now you MUST write down your goals:

What do you want to achieve during the next month?
What do you want to achieve during the next 12 months (yearly goals)?
What are your life long goals?
Every day, we have to carry out tens of tasks that need to be completed today. Hence we do not give any time to think about our goals. Therefore, we should not only write down the goals clearly and PLACE them at a place from where you can SEE them. You may post them on a wall of your bedroom, desk or on a mirror. These goals should be seen and read at least once daily to remind you of the goals. If you start writing down your goals TODAY then you will notice immediately that your efforts are spent in the correct direction and you are utilizing time in a more effective and efficient manner. Document your goals and establish the priority for each goal. Often people do not give importance to document I writing down the goals. They say that their goals are clear in their mind therefore there is no need to document them. It should be remembered that out of sight out of mind. The task of establishing priorities influences your effectiveness and the sense of well being. Because of too many priorities, unplanned activities without much result could lead to nervous breakdown and / or family problems.

Review and Access Your Activities
Now you have documented your goals. The next step in the time management is to examine your daily activities to see if these activities are in line with the goals or not. Normally, we are used to our daily routine activities that may not have any relation to the goals and sometime these are against the main objectives. Usually, our activities consist of reading newspapers, sitting in front of TV and watching the programs without any plan, after prayers standing outside the mosque and talking to friends without any objective, spending long time on telephone calls, visit someone without prior appointment, etc. In these activities we waste a considerable amount of our time that has no or little relation to our main goals that we want to achieve. It is imperative that we must control our time and recognize those activities that waste our time. Most of us think that they know how to spend time effectively. In reality we do not know because we are not aware how much time is spent on each activity. In order to assess our situation, each one of us should keep a record of all the activities for next 16 days. Any activity that requires more than 15 minutes should be recorded. At the end of the period, review all the activities and make an assessment about:

· Have you spent the time on the right items that will help in meeting your main objectives / goals?

· Examine on which issues you have spent more time than necessary and identify the issues that require more attention.

· Estimate the time wasted on unnecessary items.

When you will review your daily activity list, you will be astonished to find out that how wrong you were about yourself. Now you know where and on what items time is wasted. Therefore make the necessary changes. In order to do proper changes to your time management you must perform the planning function correctly.