Learning Time Management Skills for Your Personality

While there are many common aspects when learning time management skills most people do not take into account their personality type when deciding on their methods. Who you are and how you deal with your problems is essential in planning for good time management so here are a few common types of personalities, how they waste time and how they can manage time better.

Busy
Busy types always feel there is no time to do anything because they are so busy rushing around fixing problems and working at what they think is important. The problem with anyone who thinks they are too busy is that they probably make themselves busier than they need to be. This is often caused by poor priority planning spending too much time on small inconsequential problems they could delegate or even leave to a less busy time. They also tend to rush from crisis to crisis leaving piles of tasks behind them not done creating more problems in the long run which is a planning problem. To counter this, a busy personality needs to realize while they are a doer they need to set their priorities right and direct their energies to the right problems at the right times. By doing this a busy personality can be very productive.

Talkative
Some people just love to talk and socialize and while this can lead to great relationships and people with this trait often make good sales people the tendency to get side tracked by chatting cuts into their time; often this also leads to this personality type blaming their work more then themselves for their workload. People with great social skills can be a real asset but to overcome their time wasting problems you may think that isolating them from others would help; this in fact makes this worse! A social person needs to be social to feel good and be productive but must also learn that moderation is the key, having a beeper to remind them of the time every now and then can spur them on if they get too caught up and having a space that is isolated to work on important things is necessary for them to avoid interruptions which can draw out their natural instincts.

Meticulous
A meticulous person is very precise in all that they do making sure every task they finish is perfect and in order and completely without fault. The problem is that they spend too much time on each task to get them all done! While the meticulous person might have a good idea of priorities they do not have a good sense of time allocation. While it can be hard to get this personality type to learn a new skillset they can learn to divide their time better. Instead of following one project through until the end they should set a certain amount of time in a day and then change to another project no matter if they are finished or not. While this does not seem to finish things any faster it does allow freshness every time you swap projects that is more inventive and efficient which means when you come back to a half finished project the second half can be a breeze with a fresh look instead of being bogged down in one for a whole day!

If you see some of your own personality in these archetypes you may just be spending your time incorrectly but learning time management skills that fall in line with your personality and your strengths can be more rewarding and effective than a cookie cutter solution.