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eLearning Series: Time Management
How Can I Manage My Time Better?
( 50 articles in this series )
Is
Rewarding Yourself a Motivating
Time Management Tool?
Incentives are all around. Think about it!
There is the company wide bonus for achieving the customer
service satisfaction goal; next is the reward for the most
productive team member; the boss also recognizes the most efficient
worker, the most enthusiastic assistant, and so forth. The
list of recognitions is seemingly endless. Yet what about getting
recognized yourself? Do you reward yourself for the
things you did well? Do you recognize yourself for the accomplishments
you have celebrated? While the boss may not have noticed your
daily struggle to meet the deadlines, you have. Yet have you
taken the time to reward yourself?
Rewards
do not need to be outlandish. They should be realistic,
in keeping with your budget, and something out of the ordinary.
For example, if you go out to eat each Friday night, this customary
trip to the restaurant is not the same as a personal reward.
You would have gone anyways. Perhaps an additional dinner out
on another night of the week would be in order!
Similarly, your
personal rewards should be tied to realistic, and achievable
goals. Do not raise your bar so high that you
cannot possibly achieve it. You may wish to reward yourself
for accomplished short term, mid term, and also long term goals.
This system of rewards will permit you to stay on task, and
to also see some direct positive results from your hard work.
It is interesting to note that rewarding
yourself will not only increase your personal morale, but
it will actually have
a positive effect on your time management. Are rewards a valuable
time management tool? Yes!
Time management demands a firm grasp of what you are doing
with your time. By scheduling your appointments, you keep your
day on track and your customers and clients happy. By scheduling
your leisure time (or reward time) you will keep yourself happy.
By combining both schedules, you will find a realistic set
of time that you have left to accomplish the work that will
not take you out of the office. At the same time, this combined
schedule will remind you of the reward in store for the successful
completion of the project, meeting of the deadline, or any
other short term reward you may have chosen. In a way, this
reward will be the dangling carrot in a world of office politics,
next to impossible deadlines, and telephones ringing off the
hook!
Rewards will also become highly effective time management
tools when you consider how much harder this form of self motivation
will make you work to accomplish your set goal. Goal
setting in itself is a major component of effective time management,
and it is easy to see how a desirable reward could be a great
form of motivation.
Another aspect that draws a clear correlation between the
art of time management and the carrot of rewards is the simple
fact that a highly motivated individual will focus
on a project and perform all steps needed to accomplish it. In other words,
if you have your recreational time planned, and your appointments
set up, the remainder of the time is yours to decide how to
make it work the best for the needs you have of it. Suddenly
the game of computer Solitaire is no longer so enticing when
you realize that it may very well take away from the opportunity
to accomplish the short term goal and the coveted reward. Naturally,
personal wastes of time are only part of the issue. The other
part revolves around the proper usage of all available resources,
such as co-workers, team members, and even bosses! Train up
your fellow workers so that they may assist you competently
and confidently with some of the tasks you have to do. By delegating
as much as possible, you will soon find yourself with an easy
to handle workload that is not threatening to overwhelm you.
Last but not least, proper planning of both work and fun time
will allow you to have a healthy balance in your life. With
a healthy balance, you will be able to manage your time effective
and consistently. # # # # #
SolveYourProblem.com
: 2006
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