What would be an indicator of poor time management?

Symptoms of poor time management.

1. Poor punctuality.
You are regularly late for your appointments or completing your tasks. This may be due to you accepting too many tasks or your inability to assign the correct amount of time to your activities. Poor punctuality almost always impacts others and, as a result, usually has a negative impact on the quality of your relationships.

2. Rushing.
There will be times when everybody has to rush a little; however, if you find yourself constantly rushing from one appointment to another then your time management is poor. A skilled time manager allows sufficient time between appointments to cope with unforeseen events e.g. a previous meeting overrunning.

3. Impatience.
Impatience is usually a sign of poor time management. Having failed to allow sufficient time for a task or, having procrastinated excessively, you find yourself under extreme pressure to make a deadline. You may accuse other people, or technology, of delaying you but the truth is that you have failed yourself by failing to manage your time properly.

4. Poorly defined goals.
Your goals help you to identify your priorities. They outline what you want to achieve, when you want to achieve it by and the importance of the task. If you do not have clearly defined goals, how are you supposed to know which tasks need to be prioritised? A skilled time manager knows to take time to set clearly defined goals, around which their activities can be scheduled.

5. Procrastination.
Sometimes, you know what needs to be done but you keep putting it off. Eventually, when you decide to complete the task, the deadline is usually looming large and you are under pressure to complete the task in time. Repeated procrastination can result in stress and poor performance.

6. Poor performance.
You can get away with poor time management for a while but eventually it catches up on you. You begin to miss deadlines; you are constantly late for appointments and your impact on other people becomes too much for them to cope with. Your productivity levels decline and your backlog increases.

7. Lack of energy.
When you have poor time management skills, you are constantly chasing your tail. You constantly fall behind in tasks and you have to work extra hard to catch up. Eventually, your energy levels begin to drop and you lose motivation. It becomes harder to catch up and so you fall further behind which drains you of even more energy.

8. Perfectionism.
This is one of the symptoms which I have suffered from myself. You spend so much time trying to prepare and make sure that you perform the task perfectly that you either fail to start or go incredibly slowly. In reality, very few tasks are ever performed perfectly but when you are overcome by a need for perfection, it can be hard to see that.

9. Indecisiveness.
When you are faced with more than one option, you are unable to choose an option and run with it. You spend excessive time going over the options without coming to a conclusion.

10. Saying ‘Yes’ to everything.
It is great to be able to help others but if you are always helping others, you are rarely working on the tasks which are important to you. Constantly saying ‘Yes’ will leave you with an excessive workload. One of the quickest ways to improve your time management is to be assertive and learn to say ‘No’.