Learn the definition of time management and explore its benefits. Review time management examples, and study the various steps to skillfully manage time.
Updated: 11/21/2023
Time Management Definition, Benefits & Examples
Table of Contents
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is time management and why is it important?
Time management is being able to effectively complete tasks in the time that someone has to work. Is is important because it helps to increase productivity and decreases stress and anxiety from procrastinating.
What are some good time management skills?
Good time management skills include prioritizing tasks so that things that are important do not become urgent. Another good time management skill is being able to adjust tasks and time as necessary if priorities change.
Table of Contents
ShowTime management is the act of someone planning or organizing their time between different activities to maximize their effectiveness. Those who can practice good time management skills get more done in less time. The time management meaning in the workforce began with Frederick Taylor's time and motion studies because he was looking for a way to increase productivity in a steel company. He timed the employee's sequence of motions to see what tools could be improved for the required motions to be more effective. From his study, the company could get rid of any unnecessary motions that did not contribute to the employees getting their work done, thus increasing the time they had to be productive.
Frederick Taylor was directly involved with blue-collar workers or those workers who engage in manual labor. It is easy to see and track the productivity among blue-collar workers. On the contrary, it is much more difficult to track the productivity of white-collar workers or those who work in offices that do not require hard physical labor.
Benefits of Time Management
Time management is important because it is a direct counter to procrastination. Procrastination is the act of waiting until there is a short period of time to get something done. Lacking time management and being a procrastinator can cause someone to complete a task in a lackluster way. The benefits of efficiently managing someone's time include increased productivity, less stress and anxiety, and the realization of goals.
Increased productivity is the ability to get a significant end result out without putting as much in. Increased productivity at someone's job can lead to promotions or other advancement opportunities. When a supervisor sees an employee can maximize their time in a way that they can get things done efficiently in a shorter amount of time than their peers-they recognize the employee has excellent time management skills.
Being inundated with too many things to do without having enough time to recover for oneself can lead to stress and anxiety. Stress and anxiety are intense emotional states of excessive worry and fear. Suffering from stress and anxiety can lead to mental health disorders such as depression or physical ailments such as headaches, chest pains, and low energy. Having time management skills helps a person to be more in control of their time, helping to reduce stress and anxiety.
A realization of goals is another benefit of time management because it helps with prioritizing. Prioritizing is determining the order for dealing with tasks by order of importance. It can be easy to feel as if everything is of equal importance; however, ranking and separating tasks from urgent, to important, and then flexible, and then setting timelines to complete each task can help. If a person can set a goal, they can easily prioritize what should be done in order to meet it.
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Time Management Examples
Time management is important so that a person can complete more work in the time that he or she has available. The following time management examples can help in deciding which process is the best for personal use.
Steps for Effective Time Management
Carla Crutsinger wrote a book titled Thinking Smarter: Skills for Academic Success as a guide to help those in academia with time management. As things change, Crutsinger stresses the importance of being flexible with the time spent on each task and the initial goals that were set. As personal life and work demand change, so can the time that a person has that can be devoted to a task. Similarly, a goal that maybe was not as much as a priority before could potentially become more urgent and therefore require a change of course. The final step includes observing results to reevaluate if things could have been done differently to maximize the time it would take to reach a goal.
1. Set goal(s)
2. Prioritize goals
3. Allocate time to each specific task
4. Adjust plans as necessary
5. Revisit goals and reprioritize as necessary
6. Observe results
Time Management Skills
Neil Shipman and William E. Kelly are two notable academics who have both written about the benefits of skilled time management. Neil Shipman hypothesized that effective time management on a daily scale was essentially all about knowing oneself. He wrote that people who are fully aware of themselves also know how much time they would require to regenerate themselves with a break before getting back to the tasks at hand. If you are unaware of the time you need to regenerate, you will not handle the next task effectively. Shipman feels that the best way to have time management is to structure time for daily tasks wisely and schedule breaks accordingly to allow for a period of renewal. William Kelly advised that list-making is the best way to prioritize and organize one's time so that the tasks can be broken down into smaller pieces. By actually writing the task(s) and setting the timeline for completion, it makes the tasks finite until it is fully taken off the created list.
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Time Management Research
Steven R. Covey's book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People popularized personal productivity instead of time management strictly regarding work-related activities. Covey put forth the idea that people should focus on what is important rather than what is urgent, although those things that are urgent can also be important. The key is to handle the important things before they become urgent. From his research, he created a time management matrix. The matrix allows for someone to prioritize their tasks into four quadrants:
- Quadrant 1- urgent and important
- Quadrant 2- not urgent but important
- Quadrant 3- urgent but not important
- Quadrant 4- not urgent and not important
A person should place their tasks in the appropriate quadrant with deadlines. Covey put forth that once a person executes the required time for important activities, there will always be time to complete the less important ones. As a person moves through each quadrant, productivity, efficiency, and time management increase while stress decreases.
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Time management is being able to plan the amount of time spent on activities to increase productivity. People typically think of time management in terms of work-related activities. This is due to Frederick Taylors time and motion study among factory workers. He studied blue-collar workers within a steel company in order to decrease the time required to complete a task. While monitoring the productivity of blue-collar workers can be done easily because of the ability to monitor their output, it cannot easily be monitored for white-collar workers. The benefits of time management include increased productivity, less stress and anxiety, and the realization of goals. Time management helps to counter procrastination which is the act of delaying something, although there can be negative consequences later.
There are several academic theorists who have provided ways to manage ones time by way of prioritizing. Carla Crutsinger gave a 6-step process that is includes being flexible as time and priorities change. Neil Shipman wrote how time management was about knowing oneself and the time a person needs in order to rest from completing a task. A person must structure their time in order to renew themselves. If you are not renewed, you can not move to the next task and complete it effectively. William Kelly describes how prioritizing daily tasks by writing down tasks and then breaking them into smaller pieces helps to set a timeline for completion. Stephen Covey's book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People was one of the first writings to describe time management as a means of personal management. He discusses how it is best to focus on important but not urgent activities because if you prioritize what is important things will never become urgent. Covey details how to use his Four Quadrant Matrix to set goals.
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Video Transcript
What Is Time Management?
The modern concept of time management - the act of planning the amount of time you spend on which activities - really began with Frederick Taylor's scientific management techniques. His goal was to increase worker productivity. To do this, he conducted time and motion studies and began to focus on the best ways for jobs to be performed to maximize the work completed in a given amount of time.
Why Manage Time?
Time management has come up as a subject in the management field to reach the goal of increasing productivity, especially among white-collar workers for whom work output may be hard to measure. For example, an assembly line worker's output of 60 widgets per hour can be compared to a factory average and deemed as acceptable or not; however, white collar outputs tend to be difficult to compare to standards. So, modern managers in these areas look for ways to monitor worker productivity in terms of time use.
Examples
Modern time management goals are still to increase productivity, but the best way remains elusive. Many researchers have explored the subject and come up with different theories on effective time management. Here are the theories of a few big names in the time management field:
In her 1994 book, Thinking Smarter: Skills for Academic Success, Carla Crutsinger defined effective time management as the process of:
- Setting goals
- Prioritizing those goals
- Deciding how much time to allocate to specific tasks
- Adjusting plans as they change
- Revisiting the goals and priorities regularly
- Observing results
Academic leader Neil Shipman feels that the critical skills for time management are:
- Being aware of yourself - your habits and your ways of working
- Structuring your time
- Setting goals and priorities
- Increasing personal efficiency and effectiveness
- Scheduling specific time for each activity
- Scheduling relaxation time in order to regenerate
William E. Kelly, in his 2002 article on time management, defined critical time management skills as:
- Making task lists
- Organizing resources and work
- Setting goals
- Creating and reviewing a schedule
- Breaking down large tasks into smaller pieces
Stephen Covey's Time Management Research
One big name in time management is Stephen Covey, a businessman and professor who has done his own, extensive research into the subject. In fact, Covey put together a matrix, which he published in his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. In this matrix, the categories 'urgent' and 'not urgent' appear across the top, and the categories 'important' and 'not important' appear down the side.
Covey feels that, when you are doing 'urgent' and 'important' activities, stress is high, and you are more likely to burn out. If you focus most of your time on unimportant activities, the important tasks will never be completed.
When you spend most of your work time in the 'important' but 'not urgent' category, you are making the best use of your time. In this quadrant, you are focusing on important issues but have a lower external stress level, which enables you to take the time needed to assess the situation and implement an effective long-range plan to address the issue.
Lesson Summary
Let's review. Time management is the act of determining the amount of time you will spend on different activities, with an ultimate goal of increasing productivity. Originally, Frederick Taylor believed time management should be used to understand how white-collar workers use their time. The best way to do so is not yet agreed upon, but research completed by Stephen Covey, William E. Kelly, Neil Shipman, and Carla Crutsinger can give you some ideas to manage and improve time utilization.
Time Management Definition & Important Researchers
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- Time management: The act of planning the amount of time you spend on which activities.
- Managing time helps to increase productivity.
- Carla Crutsinger: Author who defined effective time management processes.
- Neil Shipman: Academic leader who described critical skills for time management.
- William E. Kelly: Author who defined other critical time management skills.
- Stephen Covey: Authored a book called The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, in which he put together a matrix to guide time management.
Learning Outcomes
Once you've worked through the lesson, you should be able to:
- Define time management
- Describe Frederick Taylor's work
- Explain why time management is of particular interest in white-collar work
- Summarize the time management theories of Carla Crutsinger, Neil Shipman, William E. Kelly, and Steven Covey
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