7 Tips Of Time Management in Nigeria For Work-Life Balance

If you are lookin for te 7 Tips Of Time Management in Nigeria For Work-Life Balance, ten listen to wat I am about to say. Time can be defined as a specified numerical or general indication of a length of progression. Time is a given period or duration of a specific activity. Time management at work in Nigeria in itself can then be explained as the judicious use of time to accomplish an end for work-life balance.

The Western world have a somewhat perfect understanding and recognition of the Importance of Time in all affairs, little wonder then that Time they say is Money! Am not trying to sound biased, neither am I biased in my reasoning but it is obvious that Westerners are very keen and sensitive to the use of time as they acknowledge the fact that Time is one of the important elements of human existence. So many things are affected by time and even life in itself is time-bound!

In NIGERIA specifically, time has never been considered as it ought to rightfully be, an indispensable and inseparable factor! We do not take time serious and that reflects so much in how we handle things around here! Talk about church attendance, school attendance, appointments, visiting, meetings, waking up, going to bed and the rest. We would all see tangible evidences of time mismanagement in these areas with proper scrutiny, our unjudicious use of time has clearly eaten deep into affecting “everything” we do and the way we do things in Nigeria which isn’t the way productive people treat timing. Because to them, every second counts!

Did you know that in Europe and America for instance, most jobs are paid for on an hourly basis? Your compensation is calculated and multiplied by the number of hours you’re engaged! While in Nigeria, your compensation is regardless of how much time you spent working, your salary is calculated on an overall monthly basis.

You really may or may not have given deep attention to this, but this is actually the true case of things and this comparison is to draw our attention fully on how much “these people” appreciate and regard time and how less time matters to us.

Time management is key to productive affairs and endeavors, so let’s discuss;

7 Time Management tips for work-life balance in Nigeria

7 Tips Of Time Management in Nigeria For Work-Life Balance

1. Be proactive

Pro-activity has been defined as the ability of one to act in advance to deal with an anticipated change, difficulty or problem. With this definition, it is obvious that for you to be proactive, you must plan ahead. For every activity one wants to engage in, one must plan how it should go, the advantages of such decisions as well as expected changes and difficulties that are associated with it or that might arise in the process. You’ll have to identify these areas, either mentally or in writing and plan ahead for solutions to such problems, only then would you be in a better position to handle such problems when they finally arise and that in itself is termed as “Being Proactive”! This is one way you’re being conservative with time in the light of time management.

2. Avoid procrastination

Procrastination is the habitual or intentional act of postponing, delaying or putting off. This is actually a harmful act. In fact procrastination is the root of many failures we experience. Honestly, procrastination cannot be justified any sense at all. A person who wishes to manage his time better must avoid procrastination at all cost. Do what you have to do when you have to do it and avoid postponing. When you keep procrastinating, you waste time unnecessarily but when you avoid procrastination, you’ll realize that you have more time for other things because everything is tackled almost and always when it ought to be. So Avoid procrastination and improve your time management at workplace with this!

3. Set time for specific activities

Managing your time in Nigeria requires that time usage is practically “Optimized”. Do you have a specific time to Wake Up everyday or do you just sleep and wake anytime you feel like doing so? Do you have specific time for dinner Or do you eat as early as 4pm or as late as 10pm? Do you have specific time for driving off from home so as to meet up with work or any other appointment at an agreed time? You need to set time for specific activities and avoid doing things at random. When you set time for specific activities, it helps you to be calculative and credible. You can be trusted because people know you’re conservative with time!

If Sunday service commences at 8am, considering the distance from you house and if you’re trekking or driving, what time should you leave home so as to be there on or before 8am? Sometimes personally, I set multiple alarms on my smartphone to remind me of timing for specific activities. I wake 6am everyday with the aid of my alarms and I’ve maintained that for over four years now. Granted, you can’t set a time for “all” activities but you can prioritize certain activities and have a “set time” for them.

4. Be committed

Be committed. Commitment is very necessary in dealings with people around you and not just people but activities as well. Being committed reflects in so many ways. Commitment to your Job makes you know that you should be punctual else you get fired. When you’re not committed to a particular thing, most likely you take it for granted and you don’t give it appropriate time. Commitment helps Time Management in the sense that you diligently spend time conservatively on activities, or with people and things you’re committed to.

Commitment to God and to the church makes you always want to be the first to get to church and welcome others, sometimes you might even go earlier than the normal timing and the rest of the time before program begins afford you the time to settle emotionally and concentrate better on what is being said. That’s time management. Commitment to your loyal customers makes you want to go open for business at the right time so that Customers won’t come around to meet your absence. Time management here allows you to have enough time with your customers and still have time for other activities simultaneously.

5. Have a Schedule

A daily schedule gives you an outlook of what things to do today, this week or month and when to do them, where to be at this time and what to do at the other time. For instance, a sample from my S Planner on my smartphone goes this way.

  • Wake: 5:50am
  • Breakfast:6:30am
  • School: 7:45am
  • Lunch: 12:00pm
  • Home: 6:00pm
  • Dinner: 7:00pm

This is a regular schedule, if you noticed my Wake Up alarm time is 5:50am instead of the 6am I mentioned previously. Yeah that’s right, sometimes your alarm wakes you and you feel lazy to wake, the 10mins back-timing I gave was to give room for that, so should in case my alarm wakes me and I feel lazy to wake immediately, at most in the next 10mins I should be up. That’s it, a schedule helps. Below is another type if schedule.

Things to do

  • Visit the Laundry/do some laundry
  • Buy provisions
  • Visit Emeka
  • Fix the radio
  • Visit MTN outlet to retrieve my sim

Now, this is an outlook of what things I want to do today and by the end of the day, I really hope to get these things done. That’s a schedule. It helps you know what things to do today, sometimes you may need to have a little pocket jotter with you for this or if you’re very retentive, you can jot it upstairs. A schedule is necessary for time conservation and management.

6. Relate time and value

For every time-consuming activity you contemplate on partaking in, it’s always good to weigh it’s value and assessing if it’s really worth the endeavor or possible time to be spent on it. Is it really worth spending this much time on? Or is spending this little time on it going to yield the much needed results? Should I spend more time? When you relate time and value to every or most activities you engage in, it is most likely that you’ll avoid dallying about or wasting time unnecessarily or perhaps you can also increase yield results from most activities. Take the time to ascertain how much time should be spent on engagements and decide If they are really worth more or less time. This is time management!

7. Be time-conscious

Time consciousness requires that one gives attention and refer to time more often than not. Every activity must be guarded and guided by time. As a person with a schedule or time allocation for specific activities, what do you do when you notice that  a particular activity is taking too much time than you bargained or budgeted for?  Would you allow it sap you time for other things or would you quit or cut it short? You shouldn’t allow too much time to go by over a certain activity when you have proposed other things to do within the same time frame!

Assuming you go to the laundry to drop your clothes for laundry and you realize there’s a long clue there before you, still waiting to be attended to. By being calculative, you can observe how much time it takes a person to be attended to and how many people are before you. With this knowledge, you can actually get to know how soon or how late you would leave there for some other activity that needs to be attended to as well. Time management suggests that it could be wiser to leave to go attend to some other stuffs (when you realize it’ll still take a long time to get to you and if the distance isn’t far or if the other activities are to be handled within the same environment) and return later at a more convenient time.

Be Conservative with Time. Manage your time in Nigeria for effective work-life balance.

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