TIME MANAGEMENT IS CRUCIAL FOR GHANA’S DEVELOPMENT

Ghanaians have a relaxed attitude towards time where events are unnecessarily delayed, this lateness is known as "African Punctuality".

Time management is the art of arranging, organizing, scheduling, and budgeting one’s time for the purpose of generating more effective work and productivity. Time management and the judicious use of time are very crucial to our personal, family, community and national development.

 

Time has become crucial in recent years thanks to the busy world in which we live.

Chief Nana Prah Agyensaim VI, Assin Omivenkyi Traditional Area, recently attended a program to congratulate a local school on their 25^th anniversary. Mr Agyensaim was two hours late to his speech, and he said he did not feel compelled to give any apologies for his lateness.

A local in Cape Coast was explaining how two Ghanaians make an appointment to meet at a particular time, and yet in both of their minds the meeting time is always at least two hours later than the time they actually agreed to meet. They call it the Ghana Maybe Time (GMT), a corruption of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

The Benefits of Time Management:

1. Control: Proper time management allows you to take some measure of control over your life. By pre-planning your activities you help your days to become ordered.

2. Productivity: Proper time management allows you to be more productive. When you don’t properly manage your time, you often have too many activities and not enough day. Time gets away from you.

3. Confidence: Proper time management gives you confidence. This is partly because you have taken back control of your life.

4. Fun: Proper time management allows you to have more time for fun. By prioritizing and getting the most important and pressing things done first, you then have time to do the things you really want to do.

5. Ability to Meet Goals: Another one of the benefits of time management is the ability to meet your goals. It is nearly impossible to meet your goals when you fail to properly manage your time. This is because you never get around to doing what needs to be done in order to achieve the goals you've set for yourself.

Usually people who have poor time management have no idea where they truly spend their time, They are totally unaware of exactly how much time they waste and they underestimate the amount of time it will take to get a task done, to improve time management make a to-do-list. 

Getting the most out of your To Do List:

1. Think about your daily routine. The tasks that you absolutely have to complete must be accounted for. If they are not they will take time away from the activities on your list.

2. Prioritize each task you put on your list. What comes first? What task can wait a bit but still has to get done by a set time and which activity can be put off for a bit?

3. In order to accomplish all your tasks, you will need to make room for unexpected activities that may crop up. So make sure you make room for them on your To Do List. 

As an individual forget about what the people around you are doing with their time and think, what is my time worth; what am I losing over time and what am I gaining over time. How is my attitude to time affecting what I do and the people I work with? It is only selfish people, who do not care about whose time they waste and what the consequences are to them and to others.

In most developed countries, time is considered of paramount importance; lateness is a sign of rudeness, disrespect and is a cause of anger and frustration. Most nations have strict working and public transportation timetables to adhere to; even five minutes of lateness can cause a business to lose revenue.

In 2009 President John Evans Atta Mills launched a national crusade for time consciousness and punctuality, stressing discipline as the basis for national prosperity, yet not much change has been seen. Adults and people of authority have to set an example for younger individuals and employees. The ‘lateness culture’ in Ghana needs to be eliminated, and fewer excuses have to be made so that Ghana can propel forward.

- Olivia Berry (Projects Abroad)