“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:
Today's world is very fast paced. In fact today's world is symbolized by fast pace of rockets, bullet trains, and fast sports car. Everyone is required to do so many different things such as education, job, spending time with family and maintaining health etc. at a same time that everyone struggles to do proper time management. I agree with the earlier part of the statement, I indeed think that proper planning is the key to effective time management.

First of all, I would like to mention about the book, "Seven habits of highly effective people", by life Guru, Dr. Stephen Covey. In this book Dr. Covey stresses on proper planning of one's time to "win" in life. As per him careful planning ensures that one wouldn't miss important things and activities in life. Dr. Covey observed that normal human being wastes lot of time in doing unwanted things in life and many important things get sidelined. Proper planning helps to get eliminate these unwanted things and makes our life richer.

Secondly, as Per Dr. Covey once we start doing proper time management chances are that we will work on things which are mainly "important" and not just "urgent". Working on important things of present will ensure that "urgent" things in future will get eliminated. For example if we find a water spill in factory and ensure that water gets cleaned, chances are that there won't be any safety incident due to that water spill. We eliminated "urgent" matter for future by our proactive thinking. In summary, proper planning reduces occurrence of unexpected problems.

Along with above points, I would also like to say that sometimes unexpected things will destroy our planned things completely. But chances are that once we recover from unexpected problem we will be again able to gain control in very short time. Discipline set in our life by proper planning will help us to ensure that we get back on track in less time. On the other hand, even if we keep employees flexible, it doesn't mean that they will be able to tackle emergencies in effective manner.

Therefore, I think one should try to maintain habit of effective time management. Effective time management will ensure that one will achieve important and long term goals in life.