Time management is the process of planning and exercising conscious control of time spent on specific activities—especially to increase effectiveness, efficiency, and productivity. Time management involves demands relating to work, social life, family, hobbies, personal interests and commitments. Using time effectively gives people more choices in managing activities.

Time management may be aided by a range of skills, tools and techniques, especially when accomplishing specific tasks, projects and goals that have a due date. Differences in the way a culture views time can affect the way their time is managed. For example, a linear time view is a way of conceiving time as flowing from one moment to the next in a linear fashion.

This linear perception of time is predominant in America and most Northern European countries, such as Germany, Switzerland and England. People in these cultures tend to place a large value on productive time management and tend to avoid decisions or actions that would result in wasted time. This linear view of time correlates to these cultures being more “monochronic”, or preferring to do only one thing at a time.

As a result, this focus on efficiency often leads to a culture of punctuality and a strong emphasis on meeting deadlines. Another cultural time view is the multi-active time view. In multi-active cultures, most people feel that the more activities or tasks being done at once the better. This creates a sense of happiness. Multi-active cultures are “polychronic” or prefer to do multiple tasks at once.

This multi-active time view is prominent in most Southern European countries such as Spain, Portugal and Italy. In these cultures, people often tend to spend time on things they deem to be more important such as placing a high importance on finishing social conversations. In business environments, they often pay little attention to how long meetings last and instead focus on having high-quality meetings.

In general, the cultural focus tends to be on synergy and creativity over efficiency. A final cultural time view is a cyclical time view. In cyclical cultures, time is considered neither linear nor event related. Because days, months, years, seasons, and events happen in regular repetitive occurrences, time is viewed as cyclical. In this view, time is not seen as wasted because it will always come back later, hence there is an unlimited amount of it.

This cyclical time view is prevalent throughout most countries in Asia, including Japan and China. It is more important in cultures with cyclical concepts of time to focus on completing tasks correctly, thus most people will spend more time thinking about decisions and the impact they will have, before acting on their plans.

Most people in cyclical cultures tend to understand that other cultures have different perspectives of time and are cognizant of this when acting on a global stage. Consequently, this awareness often leads to a greater emphasis on relationships and the quality of interactions over strict adherence to schedules.Excessive and chronic inability to manage time effectively may result from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Diagnostic criteria include a sense of underachievement, difficulty getting organized, trouble getting started, trouble managing many simultaneous projects, and trouble with follow-through. Task lists are often prioritized in the following ways:

• A list of things to do, numbered in the order of their importance and done in that order one at a time as daily time allows, is attributed to consultant Ivy Lee as the most profitable advice received by Charles M. Schwab, president of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation.
• An early advocate of “ABC” prioritization was Alan Lakein, in 1973. In his system “A” items were the most important (“A-1” the most important within that group), “B” next most important, “C” least important.
• To prioritize a daily task list, one either records the tasks in the order of highest priority, or assigns them a number after they are listed (“1” for highest priority, “2” for second highest priority, etc.) which indicates in which order to execute the tasks. The latter method is generally faster, allowing the tasks to be recorded more quickly.

Various writers have stressed potential difficulties with to-do lists such as the following.

• To remain flexible, a task system must allow for unforeseen circumstances.
• To avoid getting stuck in a wasteful pattern, the task system should also include regular (monthly, semi-annual, and annual) planning and system-evaluation sessions, to weed out inefficiencies and ensure the user is headed in the desired direction.

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