Last Updated on July 18, 2021 by Sarah McCubbin
As a homeschooling mom, I started emphasizing time management with my kids when they reached junior high. By the time they were in highschool, it was expected that they would manage their time and get their school work done in a timely fashion. That worked in theory, but how that played out in real life looked quite a bit different.
My oldest would make a list, get a couple of subjects done, take a gaming break, get a few more done and repeat. His work was completed in a timely fashion and he had plenty of free time to do whatever he wanted in the meantime. This led to peace, trust and increased opportunities.
My second oldest took a different approach. She would look at the list of work to be done and feel completely overwhelmed. She would do the easy subjects but never get around to the difficult ones. Instead of working on them in small increments, she would argue, make excuses, avoid and waste her time and mine. This led to endless frustration, anger, negative consequences and loss of privileges. It was this unhappy hamster wheel that we couldn’t’ get off.
I had 2 smart kids, almost the same age, taking virtually the same classes and having completely different outcomes. For the longest time, I couldn’t really articulate what I was seeing…or really understand what was working for one but not the other.
But when I finally looked at myself and my own successes and failures, I started to see some uncomfortable similarities to my children. Some things I was naturally good at and could prioritize my time to get a lot done quickly. Other things that I wanted to do or knew I should do, I seemed to have a pattern of try…fail…try…fail..try…fail…and never gain any momentum.
What was the problem? It boiled down to time management. It was easy to manage the things that were easy because they were fun, interesting and gave my self-esteem a boost. But things like exercise, cleaning my house, preparing healthy meals and writing all fell into the repeated failure category. They were not fun, energizing or immediately beneficial.
As a consolation prize, I would tell myself that I was already doing plenty of things well and that it didn’t really matter if I succeeded at my goals. There was always time for that later. But later never came and I never felt good about any of those failures no matter how I tried to reframe them.
I wanted something to change but didn’t know what that looked like. When I discovered the idea of the ten minute momentum, it shifted my understanding of time management and how to accomplish goals that I had disqualified myself from achieving.
Table of Contents
What Is Time Management?
We all have 24 hours…1,440 minutes…86,400 seconds in a day. The wealthiests billionaire and the homeless person at the local soup kitchen have this in common. We have the same number of minutes every day. Clearly we do not all use them the same way or have the same results with our minutes.
Time management is simply a way of practically looking at the time you have and choosing how you will use that time to accomplish what you need and WANT to do. Biblical stewardship often refers to finances and time as things the we should use wisely to meet our needs, to invest for the future and to give to God and other people. It’s a lofty sounding idea to steward our time. But in practical terms it looks like taking a hard look at our lives and making choices that move us in the direction we want to go to meet our personal, work and family goals.
5 Reasons Why Time Management is Important at Home
I will admit that in seasons of my life, I have lacked intentionality toward time. Being a mom with lots of littles, sometimes days just seem to run together in an endless cycle of laundry, food, cleaning, schoolwork and exhausted sleep at the end of the day. In the back of my head, I knew it didn’t have to be this way all the time, but how to change?
1. Less Stress & More Rest
When we choose to actively manage our time, we are intentionally choosing what we prioritize. This will look different for every person and every family. It is important that we take the time to actually pause and think about what is important to our family. I can look at families I know and see that some prioritize going to church very regularly, or participating in sports, or taking family trips, or perhaps a lot of volunteer work. I know that I personally have started to feel worn when I was prioritizing things that were important to other people above what was important to me and my family. I didn’t even realize I was doing it. What brings joy and refreshment to you may exhaust and overwhelm me. And if I am not careful, I will let what others value take priority over my own values. This leads to STRESS.
Conversely, when we make our list of priorities and choose to joyfully do those things (while perhaps not doing some other things), we feel rested and relaxed because we are doing things that we actually WANT to do.
2. Meet your personal goals more quickly
For a number of years, I did not have any personal goals. I think the season of life I was in made it feel difficult to prioritize me in any way. When I was younger I had goals and had met all of those, but for years, I had none. But I realized that if you have no goals, you will meet that goal every time. Right? Where am I going if I have no target to hit. I love that by breaking big projects into small bites, Eating Frogs and developing regular habits, things that once seemed impossible start to happen very quickly.
3. Procrastinate less
I love planners…love them. I love the feeling of checking boxes and flipping through past pages to see that I did actually do things. But what I love even more is to start my day with an organized checklist, broken down into reasonable tasks. When we take the time to make a list (ideally the night before), I think it gives our brain time to really organize our thoughts more, so that when we do start working, we work quickly and easily. Instead of wasting a half an hour staring at a computer, or wasting time flipping through Facebook, I have a concrete list to work from. It makes it easier to start and also to regain focus if a distraction does come up.
4. More time for leisure
Time management’s golden benefit is that it leaves more time for leisure. Define that how you will but leisure is whatever YOU WANT TO DO! If you want to have more time to travel, volunteer, play sports, or gather with friends, you can do it and ENJOY it more because the things you needed to do are done!
5. Greater Appreciation for what you have.
Time management helps you appreciate things differently. When you know that you have prioritized some goals, relationships or activities above others, it helps you realize WHAT YOU HAVE! In my case, I have a large extended family. I will prioritize those family gatherings above almost everything else. Having been a foster parent for many years, I am strongly aware that not everyone has a loving support system and that maintaining and building one takes time and commitment. I have found that as I started to consider how I was managing my time, I felt empowered and encouraged by my choice to be with family rather than frustrated or irritated because I had some other project I needed to do at that time. In reality, nothing changed other than my perspective knowing I was operating out of my own choices rather than being imposed on.
How is Time Management Different at home vs. at work?
The primary difference between managing your time at home and at work is that at home you ARE the boss and at work, you likely HAVE a boss. At home, you have complete control of how you spend your time (unless you have children haha!) and at work, you have someone expressing expectations for your position. If you want to keep your job, you need to prioritize what THEY WANT. That is pretty basic right. Just like there are benefits to managing time at home, there are benefits in the workplace.
5 Benefits of time management in a workplace
The most valuable resource any of us have is time. You can earn more money, but you can’t buy more time. Businesses know this. So we make ourselves more valuable when we realize that too…and use our time efficiently. What does that look like?
1. Complete work on time
Almost every position is part of some kind of work chain. What each person does affects the next person is able to do. When we work efficiently, it allows the next person to do the same. If we work slowly, the opposite happens.
2. Produce higher quality work
When we use time wisely and develop systems for handling our regular tasks, it reduces error. It also helps us provide a more consistent quality of work. Nothing is more frustrating for a customer to have a great experience with a business and start telling all their friends, only to have a negative experience later due to inconsistent service or products.
3. Procrastinate less
I think this is related to the previous point. When we procrastinate less, we have time to finish the task without the stressful pressure of a looming deadline. Rushed work leads to mistakes. When we are able to work without that pressure, it allows us to think more clearly and have time to double check our work.
4. Better quality of life
Most of us want to love our jobs. We may not actually like them, but in a best case scenario, we look forward to going to work and doing what we are paid to do. When we are putting our best work forward, making our company look good, and meeting deadlines, this generally translates into a better quality of life.
5. Increased opportunities for career growth
When we do our work well, and manage the valuable resource of time, people will notice. This is an uncommon skill in a world that does not appreciate time. I was in a local store recently and the man stocking the shelf wanted to put his cart right where I was shopping. I apologized for being in the way and preventing him from doing his job. He said, “Don’t worry about it. They pay me for my time not for how much work I do.” While I appreciated his patience with me, his comment once again reminded me that businesses and employees often look at time differently. But when an employee develops an “owner” mindset and realizes that the way they use their time is valuable to a business, it will lead to career growth and opportunity.
Conclusion
All of us want to use our time well. We want to feel good about our day. And we want to meet goals. All of us want these things. But not all of us know how to get there. One person dives right in and checks those boxes and another feels overwhelmed and doesn’t know where to start. The difference between these two people is that one has a system and the other does not. One has a default method for approaching their list and the other one doesn’t know that system’s exist. I’ve been in both categories. There is no “right” system but it is important to have one. When you do, time management becomes something of a habit that you do easily without overthinking every step.