Business Executive and Youth Coach, Nenya Kojo Nuamah, has advised the youth to leverage technology order to manage their time during this COVID-19 pandemic.

“Some things are best done by meeting the person face to face but COVID has taught us that many things can be done by phone, by Skype, by text, by writing.

“Let us learn to make good use of technology. As part of observing COVID, we all got to know that there were many times when we could go nowhere but if you wanted to achieve something, you still got a lot of it done anyway,” he noted.

Nenya Nuamah defined time as, “the duration in which all things happen, or a precise instant that something happens. While management on the other hand is about controlling what and when.”

To make the best use of their time, he advised the youth to know that ‘some things are critical, some things are important and some things can wait.”

Nenya Kojo Nuamah gave this advice at an online presentation on time management on the COVID-19 Recovery and resilience Programme (CoRe).

CoRe is an intervention by the Springboard Road Show Foundation in partnership with the MasterCard Foundation and Solidaridad.

The programme, which seeks to support young people in the country in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, is designed to provide support through e-mentoring, e-counselling and e-coaching to equip them with relevant skills.

This is to enable the participants about 692, 000 to survive and thrive during and after the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The CoRe programme, which began in June is running till November, 2020, will provide support to the beneficiaries in areas such as; building resilience; health awareness; wellness and safety; building relevant workplace skills and job readiness in a post-pandemic era.

It involves weekly radio and online mentoring sessions in English and various Ghanaian languages as well as counselling for the beneficiaries across the country.

Planning your day

Nenya Nuamah advised the youth to always plan their day.

“Ask yourself these questions before you put your foot off the bed. What do I want to do today that I could not do yesterday? What is the single most important thing I must do today if I could only do one thing?

“Remember, you cannot do everything; but there are things you must do today if you are to make progress. You must be clear in your mind what is the most important thing to be done at each time,” he stated.

He also advised them to set clear deadline if they were to succeed.

“Set clear deadline for today, for this month, for this week, for this year, for that project. You must say to yourself, “this is how much time I have to do this work and get it accomplished.”

Sticking to routine

Nenya Nuamah also emphasised on the need to set a clear routine and sticking to it,

He also called for the need to decide what could be done at home and what must be done at a particular place.

What to say no to

Nuamah also noted that it was necessary to learn what to say no to and what one must stop everything to follow.

“If you run a restaurant, a bar or an eatery, during lockdown, you were at the best without a business. However, with its easing, you have to rethink the best way forward and to ask yourself, “what can I do differently to attract the same or more business with the skills I had before COVID?

” If you used to prepare food for offices before lockdown, this time you can only prepare things that people don’t typically make at home like bread, like pastries, instead of foods that were able to sell to people who now prefer to make them from home for fear of any infection for example,” he explained.

He also advised the youth to always take notes and the need to have a ‘phone time.

“Do not rely too much on your memory. You’re not in the other person’s head and don’t assume, “I will remember everything he said.”

“You also have to know when you take calls and when you don’t. In some meetings, it’s not just offensive to stop and take a call, it also means that you can miss something critical,” he added.