Managing time

Like money, time and space are resources, rarely abundant and not equal for everyone in how they can be used. Time is limited and irreversible: everyone has 24 hours a day, and no one can stop, slow or regain it. As demands at home, school and work grow, time management becomes essential. Its principle is to concentrate on results, not on being busy: a student who spends the evening worrying about a test, instead of revising, is busy but achieves little. Good time management also leaves room for rest and recreation.

All time management begins with a time plan: an advance schedule of activities for a given period. Activities can be compulsory or optional, and daily (cleaning, school work, cooking), weekly (washing clothes, shopping), monthly (paying fees, rearranging cupboards) or yearly (final exams, health check-ups). Each person's plan differs: a student's day looks very different from a rural homemaker's, who may rise at 4 am to milk the cow and work in the fields. The book offers a 15-question self-check to judge how well you manage your time.

Steps in a time and activity plan:

• Start promptly; do not keep postponing.
• Get into a daily routine for school work and chores.
• Prioritise: compulsory tasks before optional ones (study for tomorrow's test before anything else).
• Learn to say 'No' to unimportant, low-priority tasks.
• Divide big tasks into small, manageable parts, for example by subject.
• Do not waste time and energy on trivial tasks.
• Deal with one task at a time until it is finished.
• Fix 'start' and 'stop' times for each activity.
• Make a schedule for the whole day, always including leisure.
• Helpful tools: a 'To do' list (activity, deadline, reason), a daily or weekly planner, and a long-term (monthly) planner.

Tools of time management:

• Peak load period: the time of maximum work in a day, such as early morning before school and office, or dinner time. Knowing it helps you spread tasks out.
• Work curve: a graph of work output against time: a warming-up period, then a plateau of maximum ability, then a fall due to fatigue.
• Rest periods: short breaks from work. Their frequency and length matter: neither too long nor too short.

Work simplification is consciously seeking the simplest, easiest and quickest way of doing a job, saving both time and human energy. It works at three levels:

• Changing hand and body motions (same tools, same product): eliminate or combine steps (letting washed dishes drip-dry on a rack instead of wiping each one; buying everything on one shopping trip); improve the sequence by doing like tasks together (dust all rooms, then sweep all, then mop all); build skill so there are fewer wasted motions; and keep good posture, letting the skeleton carry the weight, for example using a broom with a long handle instead of bending.
• Changing the workspace and equipment: organising storage, work surfaces at the right height, and labour-saving devices such as pressure cookers, washing machines and mixers.
• Changing the product or raw materials: using ready-ground spices instead of whole ones; making a quicker dish from the same ingredients; or switching both materials and product, as with a ball pen instead of an ink pen.