This morning I entered a mini-marathon. It is a 10 kilometre road race. I woke up early to do it. I was feeling tired, looking tired and also feeling not really up to it for many other reasons. Well, the race went OK, but if I did a little bit better I could have ended up with a podium finish, so it was also a little disappointing.
When you run, you have to pace yourself. I started off a little slow, because that is how I like to do it now. Then I sped up in the next couple of kilometres. After a while, I realized that I was running out of steam. I stopped keeping track of my individual kilometre times, but also I didn’t have the stamina to finish strong. I also lost sight of the guy ahead of me, so I thought, what the heck, and I finished the race by what I call, ‘Just surviving’.
My morning could have been a lot better if I had only used time management. But actually, I was only invited to this race two days ago. So I didn’t have the time to train. I was also doing a lot of training for a much slower race, the half-marathon. So I was running more for endurance, not for speed.
Many things in life just work better with time management. If only I had been told about this race two weeks ago, it would of went more smoothly. Work, study, and virtually anything in life works just the same. But the really negative part of poor time management skills is what it does to your mental health. Just failing to plan our week, can result in a lot of unnecessary stress, that when done repeatedly can lead to even bigger problems.
For me, I do some planning to help with my time management, but normally my strategy is take on the first available time slot to do any of my important tasks. I will enter in my diary, which for me is just a Word document with dates in it, my full-weekly plan. This gives me confidence that I know what I need to do without having to keep planning for one or two days at a time.
Whenever I am free, I do any tasks that need doing. I don’t leave anything until the last minute, I always do them in the first minute. It is kind of a race for me, but it works well.
Different people have different strategies. Some people know when they are productive and when they are not, and they use those productive times to get things done. Early in the morning, I can complete many tasks before my day begins, but for other people it may be late at night. I think you need to judge when you can do things reasonably quickly and well. I understand it is not always the speed, but when it takes twice the amount of time to do something at one time compared to another time, then I think you need to figure out why and maybe change the time you do it.
I need to have a life with less stress, and I think all of us are the same. I will experiment more with time management, and measure how well it improves my work life, sports performance, and social life, and let you know how I go.
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