It’s not about the planner! Managing your time and tasks requires you to think about, prioritize, plan, start, and complete daily tasks.

Time and Priority Management

Time management involves estimating how much time you have and then figuring out how to best allocate your time to stay within time limits/deadlines to achieve your goals.  Kids and adults who struggle with time management often arrive late to class, practice, dinner dates, and meetings because they just “lost track of time.”  For some of us, time just disappears – it was there a minute ago and now it’s gone. We are constantly trying to keep up with it but we often fail to manage it well.

Many who struggle with time management find it difficult to find and use a planner or calendar that works for them because it’s not about the planner: it’s about prioritizing and making time to complete their tasks!

Prioritizing involves figuring out what tasks are important to complete.  Because we tend to pay attention to everything and it’s hard to figure out what to pay attention to, we struggle to prioritize: it seems that everything is important all at once.  As a result, students struggle to figure out what to study for tests and adults have trouble recognizing which tasks need to be completed first.  Specific tools for prioritizing our tasks can help.

Planning and Starting Tasks

Planning is necessary to complete a task, finish a project, or reach a goal.   Operating without a plan is like driving in foreign, unfamiliar territory without a map: it’s easy to get lost and you can spend a lot of valuable time driving in circles getting nowhere fast.  As a result, little gets done until the deadline, and then it’s done poorly.

Task initiation is the ability to begin a task without procrastinating.  For those of us who struggle with this skill, our brain tricks us into thinking that we work best when we are under the pressure of meeting a deadline at the last-minute: stress produces adrenalin which produces the exact chemicals our brain needs to pay attention to the right thing at the right time.  Unfortunately,  this additional stress and adrenalin are not good for our bodies.

There are three main reasons people procrastinate: (1) we don’t expect to do well on the task or we don’t expect it to turn out too well for us (completing our taxes), (2) we don’t value the task (cleaning house), and/or (3) we find lots of other things to do besides the right thing at the right time.  What are your reasons for procrastinating?

Persistence and Motivation

Persistence involves the ability to follow through to completion of a task or goal, and not being distracted by competing events.  These competing activities may be good things, but they will not help an individual reach his or her goals.  For example, spending time completing unfinished chores around the house is a good thing unless you need to be finishing an important project for school or work.

Motivation and what motivates you is important to consider when thinking about starting and persisting to complete tasks.  Are you motivated by external factors like rewards or punishment?  Do internal motivators – autonomy, purpose, mastery, or relationships – drive your engagement?  It is important to know what drives you to complete tasks as you strive to achieve your goals in life.

Need Help in Improving these Executive Functions?

The good news is these executive skills can be improved!  We can help: Contact us to make an appointment.

© 2010-2020, Monte W. Davenport, Ph.D.