A definition of time management

We all have to deal with time, whether you feel you don't have enough of it in general or for a particular project, or, quite the opposite, you perhaps have lost your job and suddenly you feel like you have "too much time" on your hands.

Time management is a way of approaching time that refers to a more proactive system of taking control of how you go about certain tasks in your work so you can accomplish more while being extra effective as well. There are certainly references to a greater concern about how time is handled by such inventors and observers, such as Benjamin Franklin in the 1700s, who wrote, "A place for everything, everything in its place" or by essayist Henry David Thoreau, a century later, who wrote, "Our life is frittered away by detail… Simplify, simplify."

But it is an outgrowth of the industrial revolution that time was looked at differently.

As parts of the world became industrialized, it was no longer recommended that time be measured by the rising or setting of the sun, or the changes in the seasons as denoted by the growing of crops in mostly agricultural societies (or the availability of fish or meat in societies that fish or hunt by season).

Frederick Winslow Taylor's book, The Principles of Scientific Management, published in 1911, reveals his views on how to increase the productivity of workers. Some of his findings, which today may seem like common sense, back then were considered revolutionary:

• Giving incentives to employees to become more productive could lead to greater accomplishments
• It would increase productivity to learn the optimal number of rest periods during the workday and to allow time for those breaks
• Offering training to workers to help them to do their jobs rather than depending on self-training would lead to more efficiency

With the work of Taylor, it became clearer that time management is not just how each

individual deals with his or her time. It is also the way that management approaches tasks, scheduling, and even the training of the employees and how that can have a positive impact on how much is accomplished.

Just as the industrial revolution forced a dramatic assessment of how work could best be accomplished, working around the clock became possible because of the invention of the light bulb. But instead, a push to take one or two days off a week—the so-called weekend— might be a better alternative. The most widespread industrial application of the weekend is attributed to American car factory head Henry Ford who, on May 1, 1926, according to http://www.history.com/ and other sources, instituted the policy of a five-day, 40-hour week, which included granting his factory workers Saturday and Sunday off.