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Many people including myself have initially found developing time management skills a hurdle to being productive with any long term consistency.

What it really boils down to is how we keep charge of our attention spans and co-ordinate with our actions in the situations we find ourselves involved.

However, having a short attention span is common for many people in everyday situations and is cause for

frustration when things do not go to plan…

…ever been held up in traffic and had to find something to pass the time?

Realising that our attention spans can be selective and how we need to compensate accordingly with time

management techniques is key to tackling this problem i.e. how someone can sit glued through their favourite two and a half our action movie but wanders aimlessly when having to tidy up a room!

The reason why the action movie keeps our attention so well is because it has been structured into these fast paced chunks of screen time which grabs our interest and holds it with things like anticipation, suspense and an element of danger and/or loss.

For example, a classic action movie plot device is for the hero to defuse the timer on a bomb.

If the hero does not defuse the bomb within a certain amount of time then it will go off and cause some major damage.

Both the hero and the audience want the bomb to be defused before this happens and this holds their interest with a strong motivation.

So, having a strong motivation plays an important part in grabbing and holding your attention.

An essential Time Management technique that mimics this effect to get you motivated and hold your attention is in this use of “Deadlines.”

Giving a task a clear start and end time provides you with a boundary to work within just like the timer on the bomb example.

Trouble is most people do not set deadlines because it is

1. A scary word!

2. They are unclear of what time to set for the task in the first place especially if it is something they have never done before. However, a quick search of the internet can help you find the recommended times to shoot for with most activities.

With a deadline in place you now need to think about how to approach these activities to meet the deadline.

Is it a case of slow and steady, fast and furious or a bit of both?

We are faced with a tortoise and the hare situation. We know that the tortoise wins the race in the end because the hare burns himself out but in saying that the tortoise only wins by default and he does not have any deadlines to meet!

The problem with both the tortoise and the hare is they stick to the same speed i.e. they do not shift gears and speed up or slow down when needed!

What we need are “snowball effects” where our activities start slow but then speeds up and what we make starts to grow more and more rapidly.

For example, you might have only a few hours after work to do things but at the weekend you have more free time where you can really blitz things! Then, next week you do the same but with the next activity and so on.

Hopefully, these examples have given you some useful ideas and insights into how you can develop your own time management skills.

Remember, begin with the end in mind and break things into enjoyable chunks that you can then try and snowball.

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