Reasons behind Wastage of Time
Under-utilization of time may be due to the faulty system or faults of manager/officer/leader or due to lack of planning. There could be many factors driving the procrastination behavior like system issues, personal work habits, and lack of delegation, personality traits, and bad working habits of the leader, failure to tackle interpersonal conflicts, obstacles, and lack of far-sightedness.
Faulty System
The system may function in such a way that the subordinate's working potentialities remain underutilized while the in-charge/supervisor remains busy to perform some routine repetitive tasks that can be successfully handled by less skilled members of the team.
Faults of Manager/Leader
It may be due to lack of delegation of responsibility, personal work habits, lack of farsightedness, and strained interpersonal relations of the members of the team.
Failure to delegate:
The corner-stone of effective time management lies in the delegation of authority and responsibility to efficient and competent subordinates. Some managers resist delegating responsibilities to subordinates. The reasons for reluctance to delegate may be a lack of confidence in subordinates' capabilities, fear of overburdening, subordinates' apprehension that superiors see delegation as evidence of managerial ineptitude, and the fear that subordinates may prove to have better skills than the supervisor himself.
Personality traits/bad working habits of the leader:
Often the managers have the tendency to mix up professional and social activities. They keep in a relaxing mood during working hours, gossiping with friends, relatives, or coworkers and many times are forced to carry work home to be performed there. This style of functioning hampers the planned and purposeful utilization of time for the whole team.
Time is limited. You must allocate time to different activities judiciously in keeping with the importance of the activity in realizing your personal goals. You define the activities which you have to perform in each area. Listing all activities and categorizing them will help you devise a personal plan. There are three types of time-development activities:
- One-off: Those occurring only once.
- Adhoc recurring: Those that occur more than once but the time of occurrence is irregular.
- Regular: Those that occur regularly at the same time each day/week/month.
Failure to tackle interpersonal conflicts:
As a leader one has to tackle various interpersonal tensions and conflicts. Lack of efficient leadership results in dissatisfaction and inefficient coordination and valuable time periods may be wasted to resolve those problems. Time-bound target-oriented activities suffer greatly in such a situation.
Obstacles & Lack of far-sightedness:
Often leaders have no idea of the required approach and prefer to perform those tasks only in which he trained or exposed well. Try to understand your obstacles. Given below are common obstacles in the path of time management:
- Lack of motivation
- Poor power of concentration
- Indecision
- Lack of self-discipline
- Inability to complete jobs
- Involvement in too many activities
- Too much irrelevant work
- Too many unplanned activities
Try to remove these obstacles to the extent possible. Psychological obstacles can be overcome by understanding your strengths and weaknesses.
Lack of Planning
How often do you have a plan for how you are going to spend your day but you aren't able to complete the tasks on your plan because of unimportant tasks, interruptions, or your own procrastination? Wouldn't it be great to be able to manage your schedule and your time while avoiding, or at least controlling, these time stealers?
Managers are bound to face some crisis situations wherein, routine work schedules may be disrupted temporarily. Often less important activities may be postponed during those 'crisis-periods'. This may lead to a different 'crisis situation' in the future. During the planning phase, one has to foresee such type of unusual incidents leading to increased demand for the workforce; otherwise, valuable time may be wasted to tackle the crisis.
Planning time is very important. In order to plan effectively, you have to prioritize your long-term and short-term goals. You have also to see what is more important to do and what is more urgent. You should plan a strategy that covers both the long-term and short-term goals.
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Reasons behind Wastage of Time
Under-utilization of time may be due to the faulty system or faults of manager/officer/leader or due to lack of planning. There could be many factors driving the procrastination behavior like system issues, personal work habits, and lack of delegation, personality traits, and bad working habits of the leader, failure to tackle interpersonal conflicts, obstacles, and lack of far-sightedness.
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Tips for Effective Time Management
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