Time is prime when life is lime

William Penn once said, “Time is what we want most, but what we use worst”. Wasting time is common in the workplace, education and in life.

Now a days, we are very fond of chatting with our co-workers throughout the day, checking our phones, responding to emails, phone calls, or showing up late to work are all common ways of wasting time at work. Outside work, we may waste time by spending too much time on social media, surfing the web, watching TV, playing video games, or something else altogether. Our hectic schedule, combined with daily distractions, can easily get in the way of finishing tasks. Therefore, it’s useful to learn time management sooner rather than later. We must take this skill seriously.

Learning time management can really keep us on top of our work, help us stay ahead of assignment deadlines, and free up some extra time we didn’t know we had for extra works, studying or relaxing. It’s something anyone anywhere can learn at any point in their life, even if we’ve never been good at it before. Having a healthy work-life balance is also critical in time management. There are only 24 hours each day, so we have to find ways to accomplish everything we want via self-discipline. Cutting down on specific activities that are bad habits while properly combining important tasks can make us most effective with our time.

Time management is something that’s especially relevant to those currently studying online or hoping for online study. We know that it’s quite easy not to take online learning seriously. With regular classroom learning, we have a specific place we need to be at a specific time. But, learning online requires us to set aside some time on our own to study and go through the lessons.

This requires discipline and a real understanding about how to wisely use our time throughout the day. Because we’re in control of our own learning pace, we need to understand how to manage our time well to make enough room for our online courses and the rest of our responsibilities. Kelsey Miller, a marketing specialist and contributing writer for Northeastern University's Graduate Programs Blog suggested 7 time management tips for online students.

The students can plan ahead for their daily and weekly assignments, avoid multitasking, set up a virtual office at home, block out distractions, reward themselves after accomplishing something timely, create a balance between study and personal activities, get a good night’s sleep and take charge of their own online education.

Brian Tracy stated, “Time management is not a peripheral activity or skill. It is the core skill upon which everything else in life depends”. Regardless of our age, gender, academic and working status, or otherwise, time is one of the most important resources we have. Everything we ever hope to do or accomplish in our lifetime will take some amount of time. We can’t stop or control time. But, if we want to maintain our time and make the best of it, we need to learn how to properly manage the time we have.

Time management is something that everyone can and should learn; it’s not just for those who are naturally gifted at planning and arranging. We can create our own rules of utilizing our time to attend and accomplish all works timely and effectively. The truth is that time is just like any other finite resource. If we don’t learn how to manage our time wisely, we won’t be able to get things done as efficiently as possible. We may miss out on meeting our goals, fail to study often enough, and get too far behind on our expectations.

Even if we don’t have those specific problems, time management is also about helping us avoid stress while juggling everything.

The writer is a Lecturer of English at Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU) and can be reached at parvez@bsmmu.edu.bd