Document your goals and examine your daily activities to see if your activities are in line with the goals or not. Normally, we are used to our daily routine activities that may not have any relation to the goals and sometime these are against the main objectives.

Usually, our activities consist of reading newspapers, watching programmes without any plan, after prayers standing outside the Masjid and talking to friends without any objective, spending long time on telephone calls, visiting someone without prior appointment, etc. In these activities we waste a considerable amount of our time that has no or little relation to our main goals that we want to achieve.

It is imperative that we must control our time and recognize those activities that waste our time. Most of us think that they know how to spend time effectively. In reality we do not know because we are not aware how much time is spent on each activity. In order to assess our situation, each one of us should keep a record of all the activities for next 16 days. Any activity that requires more than 15 minutes should be recorded. At the end of the period, review all the activities and make an assessment about:

a. Have you spent the time on the right items that will help in meeting your main objectives/goals?
b. Examine on which issues you have spent more time than necessary and identify the issues that require more attention.
c. Estimate the time wasted on unnecessary items.
c. When you will review your daily activity list, you will be astonished to find out that how wrong you were about yourself. Now you know where and on what items time is wasted.

Therefore, make the necessary changes. In order to do proper changes to your time management you must perform the planning function correctly.

PLANNING
It is always difficult to make a decision that which items are REALLY important. Once you have made the decision about the PRIORITIES then you must concentrate on them rather than distracted towards unimportant issues. It is human nature to lean towards easy tasks and try to finish them and leave the difficult jobs for the future. This way we keep on delaying the important activities. The main reason for this delay process is due to the lack of PLANNING.

You must have heard some people saying “I am too busy and I have too much work to do. Therefore, I do NOT have time for planning." Usually, we do accept this illogical answer. On the other hand would you accept this statement from a sick / ill person “I am too sick and too weak. Therefore, do not take me to a hospital." In this case, you will carry the person quickly to the nearest hospital for immediate treatment.

Similarly, in future if someone tells you that he/she is too busy to do planning then you should immediately register him/her to the next available time management seminar. Usually, most of us do not make firm plans regarding time management. Instead they carry out the activities one after the other without much consideration about the priority or importance. It is important to note that itself does not do work. It needs to be done by you.

Work done in a planned way is always more organized, thorough and of high quality. Everyone accepts that planning is necessary. But very few people give time for planning. It is imperative to dedicate the necessary time for planning. In reality, planning should be a habit. People who do planning regularly – have no problem in finding more time to do more things. It is a well-known management principle that if you want something to be done quickly then give it to the busiest person because he manages his time better and performs the planning function effectively.

It takes only 15 minutes to prepare a daily plan and 30 minutes for a weekly plan. If you prepare daily and weekly plan for just 6 weeks then you will become a habitual planner. The best approach for the preparation of these plans is to prepare the weekly plan on the last working day of the week (Wednesday) and the daily plan (for the next day) just before leaving for home. Your weekly plan must include the followings:

a. Identify which goals need to be worked on.
b. State clearly what activities have to be performed to achieve the above goals.
c. Assign priority to each activity.
d. Determine how much time should be spent on each activity.
e. Assign which activity should be done on which day of the week.
f. Once you made your weekly plan, now you can prepare your daily plan by assigning each activity a specific time. This is also a very important task. You should know which item to do at what time and why.