Time Management

Have you ever been in this kind of situation where you wish to do something but at the end of the day you still find yourself in the same place? It might be completing that assignment which is due in a month, a piece of research due next week, or perhaps reading a chapter of your ‘favorite’ novel so to speak. Time flies in between your contemplations on whether to carry out such tasks or not. This is usually a challenge that faces the youth especially those in campus. There seems to be a notion that time is always on their side. This is usually backed up by the fact that everything is going on well and in their favor especially for the colleagues receiving ‘something’ from Anniversary Towers.

The challenge comes in when reality hits them hard. At this point, the deadline is around the corner and time is really flying fast like bullets fired in Kapedo. There is a tendency to either panic or be complacent in a manner that shows they do not care about the outcome. These two states more often than not lead to one doing a shoddy job. However, in many occasions these ‘type-B’ comrades are often ‘lucky’ to scoop high marks in the assignments. As time goes by, a culture of last minute rush is bred among the students. In the longrun, the university is accused of churning out ‘half-baked’ graduates who are unfit for the job market. This is because the comrades fail to understand the assignments and classwork since they copy-paste the assignments from one another before submission and use mwakenyas during CATs and exams. After all, degree ni harambee!

However, as a responsible being, one needs to understand that time is money and that time lost is never recovered. Time management is one of the most important if not the most important skill that one needs to have in life. In my quest to research on how best I could manage my time, I came across a book titled The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People written by the late Stephen R. Covey. What impressed me most on how one can manage his time well was the use of four quadrants divided as follows:

• Quadrant I: Urgent & Important (For immediate and important deadlines).
• Quadrant II: Not Urgent & Important (For long-term strategy and development).
• Quadrant III: Urgent & Not Important (For distractions based on time pressure).
• Quadrant IV: Not Urgent & Not Important (For activities yielding little value).

For most people, their activities are in quadrant I and III. According to Covey, quadrant II is the most important yet the most underused. In order to yield maximum returns from any task undertaken, one needs to work both tactically and strategically at the same time as emphasized in quadrant II. For more information on how to use the quadrants, please click on the following link http://www.brefigroup.co.uk/acrobat/quadrnts.pdf

As I conclude, it is important for us to understand the value of time. Good time management requires that one maintains a schedule. For example, as a student, one will need to set key milestones that will help him/her complete his/her assignments in time and at the same time understand the course work. The golden rule is to understand one’s priorities. Moreover, the bottomline is that we need to schedule our priorities before prioritizing our schedule.