Poor Time Management, Essay Example

Identify areas in your life where you believe you have poor time management.  How can you use the elements in personal time management to resolve these problems.

A couple of the main areas in my life where I have poor time management have to do with having to multitask all the time. This comes down to making sure priorities are taken care of in the correct order. For example, I need to be more prepared for possible situations that are unplanned, such as the many times when I procrastinate about getting gas. I will put it off until the car in on empty and then I’ll ride around on empty for a little while. There was one time when I did this too long and ran out of gas and my brother had to come and get me. Now that is something that I do not want to happen again. This is something that could have been worse because I could have been in an undesirable area. Also, running out of gas causes one to be late to his or her destination, which is something that is not planned, especially if one is running late in the first place because of not leaving out on time, or in enough time to allow for something to come up. This brings me to my next point of poor time management. I have been working on breaking the habit of waiting until the last minute to get ready to leave out of the house to get to work, school, etc. Personal time management can help me with these two poor time management issues. For example, I could get things I need ready the night before, such as my clothes, my lunch, etc., and I can make a habit of getting out of bed at least a half hour or an hour earlier to allow more time to make sure everything is in order before leaving the house. This is significant to also learning how to manage time as a nurse, because there will definitely be much multitasking that needs to be done. In addition, managing time efficiently clears one’s head for being able to think critically. According to Etheridge (2007), “Learning to think critically about one’s work is a large part of nursing” (p. 27). This is important because a nurse needs to think critically on her own and as part of the team and if priorities are out of order and there is no time management, then critical errors could be made that result in undesirable outcomes.