The term "time management" often refers to a series of skills, tools, and techniques that one uses to manage time so that specific tasks or goals can be accomplished in a timely manner. Time management is used both in business and personal activities to enhance productivity and fulfillment.

Oftentimes, a time management system is developed through combining different processes and techniques.

Here are some activities involved in implementing sound time management techniques: planning, setting goals, analyzing where time is spent, scheduling, and prioritizing.

Prioritizing is the soul of a time management system.

First, you figure out what needs to get done

Then you priortize based on

1. Importance,

2. Time to compete, and

3. Deadline.

Priortizing means spending more time on the more important and time critical tasks first. So, focus on those tasks that are important and have an approaching deadline.

But before you can effectively prioritize, you must determine which tasks need to be completed, and how long they will take to complete. Once this is done, prioritizing becomes easy.

It is always frustrating when you have many things to do but so little time and energy to finish them all. No matter how hard you try, a lot of things still get left undone. And this can be quite frustrating.

The 80/20 Rule makes prioritizing work. It asserts that 80 percent of your regular activities add less than 20 percent of value to the work done. Therefore, by focusing your time on doing 20 percent of the most important tasks, you get 80% value from your efforts.

Focusing your efforts on high priorty, top value activities will allow you to achieve much, much more. High priority tasks will be done to your satisfaction and will leave you with less worry and guilt so you can finish the other 80% of the assignments with less stress and presssure.

In real life, there will be unplanned activities that will surely pop up in your daily routine. People with good time management strategies realize this and leave some leway in their schedule incase the unexpected arises.

Do not let life's surprises mess with your schedule.

These surprises can be anything, it can be things coming up you did not plan for, it could be emergencies that take you away from your plan, or it can be tasks that take you longer to complete than you budgeted, thus requiring more time from your original plan

In order to keep these surprises from throwing you of base, make sure to NOT schedule your tasks and assignments too tight. Leave some room for the unexpected that can come up.

And you will learn from experience, the unexpected will come up.

• Make a simple ‘to-do' list - Identify few items that should be done urgently. Provide approximate amount of time needed. List these tasks on several sticky notes and post each one in places where you will see them - on your computer, desk, fridge, etc....
• Create a daily or weekly planner - List down all future appointments in a planner or notebook, according to time and date. Before sleeping at night and first thing in the morning, check out this list so that you will always be prepared ahead of time.
• Visualize your long-term goals in a monthly/quarterly/yearly planner - Plan ahead, using a monthly, quarterly, or yearly chart. Long-term plans will give direction to your future life.