The Importance of Managing Your Time

By Fatma Bujsaim (@FatmaBujsaim)

Every now and then, we find ourselves sitting on the floor in a pile of papers, documents and books, while our laptop is right in front of us with tens of windows on the screen. We seem to forget when this mess started; when did the books that need reading pile up, and when did the due date of the papers that needed to be submitted get so close. We ask ourselves: where has our time gone?

People say when you are having fun time flies very fast, and when you are working it moves very slowly. The first part of the saying is proven to be true all the time, but the last part I think is somewhat wrong and especially when we enter university. While classes might sometimes be boring and long, and we feel like we have spent forever in the classroom, we usually find time slipping through our fingers and we cannot keep up with our work; things pile up so fast that we cannot remember how time went by to begin with.

We face a lot of problems when we lose track of time; we miss deadlines, which means losing grades no matter how good our work is. We also lose the privilege of having a social life; we find ourselves locked in our room/office working non-stop trying to focus. We also lose the ability to produce something of high quality/standards because our only focus is to get things over with.

At some point along the way, we learn to value time; we start to appreciate it. And the key here is to master time management. It is the only way we are ever going to get through all the work with good results. According to the Business Dictionary, Time Management is a priority-based structuring of time distribution among demands. So we basically control the amount of time we spend on a specific activity to increase our efficiency and productivity.

As cliché as this may sound, time management does not only help us get our work done, but it also helps us develop a sense of responsibility. A lot of us tend to procrastinate, and that is fine every now and then, but when it becomes a habit we fall back to being in the middle of a pile of work just siting there waiting for someone to get it all done. Learning how to manage one’s time shows that a person is responsible.

If you have been in that situation were your work requires you to have more than 24 hours in one day, it is alright. We have all went through it at some point in our life, whether in high school or university. Some of us are fortunate enough to learn from the beginning that the secret lies in managing our time wisely, the rest learn it later on with experience.

This, my friends, is what I found out while I’m on campus; I wonder if that’s going to change after graduation.

May 2011’s issue:

Here We Start – Archive80 Report – Community Talk – Food for Thought
Just Another Undergrad – Living Through The Eyes of Art
Scenes From Life – To The Point – Words, Observations, and Ramblings