essay - GMAT: Issue 18

"Some people believe that the best approach to effective time management is to make detailed daily and long-term plans and then to adhere to them. However, this highly structured approach to work is counterproductive. Time management needs to be flexible so that employees can respond to unexpected problems as they arise."

Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion expressed above. Support your point of view with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.

Answer:
Why has it been said that time management is useful or essential for doing better jobs not only in business but also in private for a long time. I believe that it is because time management has been simply for helping people do better jobs. Although I agree with the opinion that there's a side effect or a disadvantage in time management, I generally stand for time management for the following two reasons.

First of all, time management is to help people discipline themselves. Although people are created with good will or spontaneous manner, it is also true that people have inclination to evade to "comfortable zone". If there's no time management in place, people may postpone necessary tasks for a selfish reason. To prevent such a situation, time management can provide various benefits to people, such as
schedule or predefined targets. Therefore, I believe that time management is essential for people to do better jobs.

Second, time management also helps people achieve a higher goal. In other words, time management can be objective management for people. That is, when starting to achieve something big, time management will be an indispensable tool for it. For instance, in case a company sets a highly ambitious target like five-time sales figure or double corporate value, the company needs to set not only the target but also detailed milestones toward the supreme goal, such as year-by-year sales figure or monthly customer satisfaction criteria. Time management contains the kind of information and makes it possible to achieve the higher purpose.

As I mentioned, however, there's not only a good thing but also a bad thing. As an example, time management should have room to tackle unexpected affairs or incidents. Generally, to respond to them, time management contains buffers (free timeframe) to take an action for the unexpected matter.

In conclusion, as a whole, I strongly support benefits of time management. Time management can bring us discipline and a tool for higher targets.