There are times when nothing seems to go right for you. In spite of your best efforts, you often find yourself caught in a whirlwind of unfinished deadlines and unfulfilled commitments. Even the work that you have somehow managed to complete is shoddy and bereft of the quality that you are very well capable of achieving. The whole stress of the situation gets to you and you find yourself pushed to the limits of your physical and emotional endurance. The fact is that you are not alone when it comes to this sort of experience. These are regular effects of improper management of your time. Lack of time management can make even your favorite task seem tedious and cumbersome. The only solution would be to manage your time efficiently and it is to this purpose that time management activities will aid you.

Time Management Exercises
Time management activities can essentially be different according to how you plan them, but they can all be broken down to simple structures, which will help you manage your time better.

Create A Plan
For anything new that you set out to do, you ought to have a plan. It is no different with time management. To be more accurate, most plans are laid out to manage your time better, though there are others which have no time constraints. Anyhow, a plan which details your week should include all your scheduled activities, deadlines, the resources at hand and the time that you require to complete your activities. In addition to all these, add a few personal goals that you wish to achieve in that particular week and a list of few activities that helps you achieve those goals.

Classify Your Activities
The next time management activity should be to categorize the activities that you have listed in your plan. Group all similar activities together. Categorization can also be done based on priority or other personal preferences.

Keep Track Of The Time Spent
The next step should be to follow the plan that you have created. During this process, it is important to keep track of the time that you spend for each activity, irrespective of their importance or your preference. Make sure that you keep an account for each of the minute that you spend. The logic behind this activity is that it gives you a fair idea of how long you take to complete each task, which will help you make a plan that is much more efficient.

Evaluate The Use Of Time
Your records of the time will give you a report of how you have spent the time during the week. Analyze how you have used your time and look through your accomplishments as well as the tasks that you have failed to complete. It is important to look into what had occupied most of your time. Check whether the task was one of the high-priority ones or one that could have been avoided. Naturally, it is also important to see whether you have achieved your goals for the week. The evaluation should end with comparing your plan with your eventual results to see how you have performed in comparison to your expectations.

Assess Your Week And Draw Conclusions
A thorough analysis of the weekly report will let you have an idea on the areas that you need to tweak for better management of time. Some of the tasks might have required less time than you had thought, while others would have taken longer. Make a new plan according to these findings so that it will help you function more efficiently.

A Second Glance At Shortcomings
Now that you have made a new plan, go back to your previous plan and review where you went wrong and why you failed to complete. Identifying the cause of the shortcoming is very important because only this will help you perform better. This will also help you get a better understanding of your capabilities. It is quite possible that some of the biggest time wasters are certain small and menial things, which can be easily rectified. Sometimes, to efficiently manage time you will need to rectify many basic characteristics about yourself. Therefore, these appraisals often play an important role in our professional and personal lives.

On a final note, efficient time management activities do not only mean that you manage your activities but also include stopping yourself from indulging in those activities that are often of no value to you.