First there is the company wide bonus for achieving the customer service satisfaction goal; next is the reward for the most productive team member; the boss also recognizes the most efficient worker, the most enthusiastic assistant, and so forth.

Do you reward yourself for the things you did well?

Rewards don’t need to be excessive or over-the-top. Your personal rewards should be tied to your own realistic, achievable goals. You may wish to reward yourself for accomplished short term, mid term, and also long term goals. This system of rewards will permit you to stay on task, and to also see some direct positive results from your hard work.

It’s interesting that rewarding yourself will not only increase your personal morale, but it will actually have a positive effect on your time management. So I guess you could say that rewards are a valuable time management tool!

Time management demands a firm grasp of what you are doing with your time. By scheduling your leisure time (or reward time) you will keep yourself happy. At the same time, this combined schedule will remind you of the reward in store for the successful completion of the project, meeting of the deadline, or any other short term reward you may have chosen. In a way, this reward will be the dangling carrot in a world of office politics, next to impossible deadlines, and telephones ringing off the hook!

Rewards will also become highly effective time management tools when you consider how much harder this form of self motivation will make you work to accomplish your set goal. Goal setting in itself is a major component of effective time management, and it is easy to see how a desirable reward could be a great form of motivation.

Naturally, personal wastes of time are only part of the issue. Last but not least, proper planning of both work and fun time will allow you to have a healthy balance in your life. With a healthy balance, you will be able to manage your time effective and consistently.