What you do with your time at work has a direct impact on your overall productivity and most importantly, your career growth. The way you schedule your time and how you approach handling your goals is important, as this is what determines whether your work makes any impact. Gilbert Tuyiringire, a proprietor of Cold storage in Huye District, believes that the way one allocates their time has a direct relationship with the quality of their output and overall success as far as their career is concerned. He explains that to accomplish goals in life, one needs a lot of hard work and determination but that this should be coupled with time management. In some cases, he says that when you don’t respect time respectively, this is where you find some people are constantly in motion trying to complete or handle important aspects in life that are always obstacles to achieving their goals. Tuyiringire believes that from the onset of your career, when you manage your time well, there are high possibilities that you will end up making improved decisions on where you want to be in a specific period of time. “When this is done, it helps you avoid incidences where you run out of time due to many unfulfilled tasks ahead of you. This also means that you have enough time to allocate space for each and every goal you intend to achieve in life,” he says. Erica Uwamahoro, a financial manager in Kigali, says when you plan well for your time as far as your career is concerned, you will end up grabbing all the opportunities that come your way. For instance, she says at times there are opportunities that show up within your organisation and every time you end up missing up on them simply because you have been postponing going for your master’s degree for instance. “All these I believe start with good timing, like what do you need in the next five years, if you stick to it and know how you will do it, it’s less likely that you will miss out on any opportunity be it within your organisation or outside,” she says. Also, she adds that when you plan your time well, it helps you become a more reliable person in life including at your workplace. This, she says, in turn will make you more valuable as a worker and improve your professional reputation, which can help you find new opportunities to expand your career. Clarrise Gwaneza, a student at University of Kigali, says when you are pursuing your career at the right time, in some way it helps boost your confidence in what you are doing. She says this means that the time you have set to achieve a certain milestone is not being wasted, which makes you feel a sense of accomplishment and confidence in your abilities. “This is like a huge motivator that can drive you to further improve time management skills and take on new opportunities as they present to you at the right time,” she says. Besides, Gwaneza believes that planning out your time in advance is the most important element of good time management; therefore, for one to prosper in all directions, learning how to manage time becomes a very crucial aspect to stick to.
