The Importance of Goal Setting As a Time Management Tool

In order to get things done you need to set deadlines. Sometimes these will be imposed by other people - particular tasks will be already built into your day, week, month or year, for example, the conference speech that has to be written by the beginning of March; you have two days to write up the minutes of the chairman's meeting; the cake for the jumble sale has to be at the village hall by Saturday morning.

If you have not been given deadlines, set your own. If you want to write that novel, decide to complete it in one year; give yourself from January until the beginning of July to learn basic Spanish; allow yourself two weeks to produce that proposal for your line manager; give yourself half an hour to answer your morning post.

Deadlines are not as awful as you might think. Instead of treating them as a terrible thing that sends you into a panic, look on them as a helpful tool to aid your organization. With all deadlines, whether imposed or self-determined, work back from them. When you divide your task up into smaller steps, decide how long you can spend on each step and where you can fit it into your schedule. Allow yourself ample time at the end for checking and making any final additions or alterations. This last point is important. Research students, for example, often underestimate the time needed to check and write up their bibliography and list of footnotes.

If, once you've started, you get into the flow of the task and don't want to stop, ignore the deadline! If the task still seems daunting, combine deadlines for each step and the task as a whole with rewards. If you are working in an office, for example, save your rewards up. Have a 'reward list' and save your reward until the end of the day or the weekend.

Reward yourself
There is no harm in bribing yourself to complete a piece of work. Promise yourself a reward for each part of a project or major task that you complete. It might be something as simple as a bar of chocolate or another cup of coffee, but if it works for you, do it.

Make appointments with yourself
You can help beat procrastination by making dates with yourself to start and complete tasks. Instead of dealing with it when it occurs to you or putting it off until the last minute, timetable tasks into your diary. You then have no excuse for doing something else because your time has been allocated for that task. This works for small tasks as well as the steps for completing longer projects. Tell yourself that you have made a date to do the work and start on time.