Time management has been a
strength of mine since joining the military, and I have been able to carry
those skills over to my personal life and civilian career. I was always able to
arrive to work on time when I was younger because it was my highest priority at
the time, and I prioritized tasks while working to ensure I was completing the
most important tasks first. Today, I think that prioritization is the biggest
factor in my everyday time management. I have determined what tasks and
activities are the most important, ensure that each has sufficient amount
allocated to them, and use the rest of the time to complete the activities and
tasks that aren’t as pressing. However, I am never in the position where I was
not able to complete a task because I ran out of time, so I give every task a certain
level of importance.
After examining myself and my
self-awareness in the first module, I learned that my locus of control was
strong. This aligns well with the fact that I have good time management skills
because these two coincide. Time management has helped me in other areas of my
life, especially with my locus of control. Being able to manage my time and
prioritize tasks in my personal and professional life has given me more
ownership of my actions. Everyone has activities and tasks that come with
deadlines, but being able to meet these deadlines is satisfying and rewarding.
There are a few areas in which I
could improve my time management skills, resulting in reduced stress. The first
area is spending increased amounts of time on non-priority events, or those
with no deadline or consequence for not completing. The biggest culprit is TV,
and when I watch too much I have less time to spend on tasks that have a
priority. Another area is separating tasks that are related to my personal and
professional life. There are times when I spend too much time on work tasks and
not enough on personal tasks, and vice versa. I need to find a sustainable
balance for both. The last area is doing a better job of prioritizing
activities better in my personal life. There are a lot of tasks that have no
priority, but should, so there is no consistency with when and how these are
completed, even though there should be.
My action plan for improving in
these areas includes giving a priority to more tasks in my personal life, creating
a balance for activities related to my professional and personal life, and
decreasing the amount of time spent on non-priority activities. By putting a
priority on tasks at home, this will allow me to meet my other goal of spending
less time of non-priority tasks, allowing me to accomplish more of what I need
and want to during my time away from work. I will also allocate myself a
certain number of hours to spend on work related tasks so that they do not
impede my ability to accomplish activities in my personal life.
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