Time Management: Why It Remains an Elusive Concept For Almost All Of Us

What is it about managing time that manages to elude almost everyone? It's rare to find a person who has done all they are supposed to do when they were supposed to do it, and done it well for that manner.

We constantly miss deadlines. We are constantly pressed for time. We are constantly running – even to catch the bus. You decide to wake up an hour earlier each day but somehow, you never seem to catch up. Why?

It's a hard question to answer, and that may be the nature of time. That it's created in such a way that we can never have enough of it. That there's always something left over to do. Someone once said, if you wake up one morning and find that you have nothing to do, check because you're probably dead.

The best we can do is try to work with it as it is, and that's where time management comes in. We have to schedule tasks, we have to try to complete them on time, we have to prioritize and we have to always be clear on what we are supposed to be doing at any one time.

That's where scheduling and task management software comes in. Since we all work on computers today (well, most of us), we use software that will tell us what we need to be doing when, what we have missed out on, software that can remind us if we forget things.

Some of us resort to note books, and that's one way of doing it, but you'll occasionally hear someone say that they have so many notebooks now checking them all is a headache.

Sticky notes work too, but you know what a room full of stick-its looks like. It starts to look clutter, and clutter has a way of making someone feel as if they are even more pressed for time than they actually are. That's why software is such a great idea.

There are many on the internet that promise to schedule tasks and remind you and flash at you when something is overdue, but on many occasions, you will find their performance less than satisfactory. They start to need time themselves just to be managed.

You want to get software that you don't have to manage, that you don't have to think about, that you can add, edit and delete tasks fast, that allows you to put in notes and much more.

Most that you will find don't allow you to customize and change things around to suit you, and this is important because all of our memories are triggered differently. You will remember something if you see it in a certain way.

When getting software to help you out with time management, make sure that it won't need managing itself. Make sure that it does all the things I have talked about above and does them well. The free kind tend to mix you up more than help, so if you can afford it, it's well worth your money to pay for one.

After that, make sure that you schedule well and then do the tasks as scheduled. You may not get to conquer time management, but you will be halfway there.