i'm having some problems determining whether i am a shopaholic, bookaholic, or biblioholic. i have bought over 25 books in the span of 8 weeks, and considering that i spent the past 2 years (2004/5) reading probably about 2 books, this is insane.
i am happy when i receive my books, and i cannot stop looking at interesting books and buying them.
anyway.
i've read the first two chapters of the book, and chapter 2 talked about time management. it divides time management into 2 different "schools", basically it says that there are two ways you can manage time: either schedule-based or task-based.
schedule based time management basically are just like your time schedule during your school time. i.e.
8am - 9am : BM 9am - 10am : Fizik 10am - 10.30am : Lunch (my favourite subject) 10.30am - 11.30am : Biologi (man i hate this subject) 11.30am - you get the picture.
apparently, this type of time management practice are more popular with students. i bet it's because of the practice they got in school.
task based time management involves listing down your tasks, estimating and assigning time to complete for each, sorting them by priority, and then tackling them one by one. this type of time management apparently is suitable for busy people who doesn't have specific times for scheduling, and needs a lot of flexibility in managing their time, which is not possible with the first type above. (imagine the amount of work you need to shift time here and there with the schedule-type)
after reading all these, what i realized is, one of my problems during university was time management. (there are a few more which i will reflect on later)
what happened was, all my life i have been trained to use schedule-based time management. (gee, i wonder where all this training came from) and during university, i would have a nicely done schedule, but in the end i will always fail to adhere to the schedule. maybe it was a disciplinary problem, maybe it was a situational problem, but the point was in the end i got so disheartened i totally chucked time management away altogether. what went through my mind was, "i spend so much time planning, but i never follow it anyway, so why bother?". everytime i will make a schedule, and every single time like clockwork i will never be able to follow it. and so, there goes my attempt in managing my time.
after i graduated, i knew i had a problem. the thing is, i didn't view it as a "time management" problem. what went on during uni was, i used to leave assignments until last minute (and end up either not finishing it, or finishing it but never handing it in), i used to not study at all, nor attending lecture classes, and ended up cramming for exams the last minute, staying up until mornings before the exam. and just before the exams, which were usually in the mornings, i would imagine and lie to myself that i have slept the night before, i have slept the night before, i have slept the night before so that i will be able to make it awake through the exams. and i would ask myself, why didn't i do it all earlier? why didn't i prepare earlier? why didn't i finish my assignments and hand them in earlier so i will have at least some marks for the course? why? why? WHY???
rinse and repeat every semester and you'll get a pretty accurate picture of the cycle i went through during university. pretty pathetic, isn't it?
so, when i went to work, i was determined not to let all these bad experiences happen again. (notice i didn't resolve to solve my time management issue - all i wanted was not to go through all the bad experiences again. i had the idea that i will never be able to solve my time management issue because i was an indisciplined person)
i had the resolve to finish every task that i get BEFORE it was due, and i'm happy to report here that, after 5 years of working, i have done exactly just that.
:)
(as a sidenote, finishing tasks before they were due does wonders for your career - you can trust me on that)
looking back at it, i realized that at work, instead of having a schedule-based time management practice, i will list out the tasks that i have to finish, sort it based on priority, and focus on finishing them one by one. i still have problems with finishing long tasks that have high priority, but i somehow managed to deal with this by finishing the short tasks (although low priority) first, and developing a momentum. the more tasks i finished, the more motivated i get, and the longer i find i can focus.
so, without realizing, i have developed a task-based time management method! one that works for me just right. and the fact that at work, you have all the time you need until your tasks are due, you have your tasks, and you have your due dates, and there is no schedule to follow at all, sets up just the right environment for me to develop this method.
and all these while, i've always thought that the problem was with me, that i was an indisciplined person who will NEVER be able to manage time. but the fact was that schedule-based time management was simply never meant for me; it doesn't suit my personality, and it never did. it appears that i failed at time management not because i don't have the discipline - it's just that i've only known one approach to manage time, and it was the wrong one.
