Time Management and Motivation

Time management can make your life orderly and hassle-free. Who wouldn’t want that? However, if you have noticed, people who manage their time well are people who have the drive to finish a task and prioritize what is really needed. And that is what we call motivation, which is the drive that pushes us to do a certain task. We can also call also its desire, the force within that enables us to achieve what we want.

What makes a person practice time management is the fact that he is motivated to do the task. He wants it to be perfect and to be systematic on what he plans to do. Some people may apply time management but lacking motivation is like sailing a ship without wind, the wind is the motivation that pushes the ship who happens to be the person. It is difficult to imagine time management without motivation because it will be useless. People can’t bring themselves to follow the schedule because they are not motivated at all.

Motivation can be in the form of rewards like praise or material things. It can also come from within the feeling of completeness when finishing a task or it can also be a simple striving to achieve a thing.

So the key to time management is motivation. In order for time management to be successful, the motivation issues must be addressed first. The level of motivation in a person also varies like we have the extrinsic motivation and the intrinsic motivation. In the extrinsic motivation, the person is motivated because of outside forces like the people around him, the expectation or the promise of a reward. While in the intrinsic motivation, which is the desire inside the person, he is motivated to do the task because it felt good.

Here are some of the tips about time management and motivation:

Setting goals are one way of increasing your motivation. These goals must be specific and clear. In order to make a huge task attainable, break it down into smaller pieces. Once accomplished, it will bring a feeling of achievement and it will motivate the person to proceed to the next smaller task. Breaking the task into smaller parts is one way of organizing the task itself.

Rewarding yourself is also effective. A simple chocolate is enough for a task well done. If you do this, the task will be associated with the rewards and it will be so easy to finish the task because of your desire to get the reward. Other forms of rewards after accomplishing something could be sleeping all day, eating your favourite food, shopping, watching your favourite television program, going out with friends, etc.

Having personal standards is helpful. Personal standards are like goals but much immediate. For example in doing a project, set a standard on how and what you want the output to be like. For example, when you’re working on a project about writing an essay, set a standard like- to finish it in one day, the essay should be 200 – 300 words, etc. This can also be called your personal criteria. Achievement of those personal standards will be quite intrinsically rewarding.

Keep track of your goal. Schedules, post-it notes, planners can help monitor what you’re doing. You can also write the task and it’s the corresponding reward.

Another way of motivating yourself to work is doing first what you like before working on a task. For example, if you like playing computer games, play first but set a time limit on the length of your playing time then after you finished playing proceed working on your assignment. Don’t push yourself to the limit if it will compromise your health. You should enjoy the things that you do.

Indeed, practising time management is quite hard especially if you do not apply self-discipline. You should be motivated intrinsically and extrinsically to succeed in managing your time. There are several ways on how to do that like setting goals and standards, rewarding yourself, keeping track of your goals and doing first things that you like to do before working on a task.

Once you start managing your time coupled with motivation, you can and will go on and on.

Featured Image: Talent Square
Source by Shafir Ahmad