Time management is the process of planning and exercising conscious control of time spent on specific activities, especially to increase effectiveness, efficiency, and productivity.
One of the most effective skills you can have in life is powerful and effective time management. If you're not managing your time well,
there's no way you're going to reach your goals at work and the life outside of
it. Sure, you might make some progress. But your time management will be an
uphill battle if you don't take your time seriously. For people who spend
and waste the precious little time they do have, they know all too well how
difficult achieving even mildly difficult goals can be.
The
truth is that time is the greatest equalizer in life. No matter who you are,
your age, income, gender, race or religion, you have the same amount of time as
the next person. Whether you're filthy rich or dirt poor, your time is the
same. It's not about how much time you have. It's about how effectively
you manage your time.
Quick
Tips for Better Time Management
So if you're serious about achieving
your goals, not only do you need to set those goals the right way, but you also
have to get serious about avoiding distractions and becoming too immersed in
the bad habits that you know you
need to quit. Time-wasters need to fall by the
wayside and serious grit-and-bear-it hard work need to take its place.
The trick?
Find a good time management system and work it. There are many. It's entirely
up to you on which one to choose. But if you don't want to become part of
the 92% statistic of people who fail to achieve their long-term
goals, then you need to pay attention to how you use the precious little time you
do have in this world.
One of
the biggest problems that most entrepreneurs have isn't just in how they can
get enough done in such a demanding market, but also how they maintain some
semblance of balance without feeling too overworked. This isn't just about
achieving and going after goals around the clock. This is also about
quality of life.
Balance
is key. If you lack balance in your life, you're going to feel stressed out.
Even if you're able to effectively juggle your responsibilities, without proper
balance you're going to eventually reach your breaking point. So, it's
important to not only follow a system that will help you get things done, but
also one where you prioritize personal and family time.
Don't
forget to do things like take a walk in the park or just sit and listen to your
favorite music with headphones on, or paint a picture, go on a date night and
so on. That's more important than you can think. And when you do that, you
achieve some semblance of balance. Life
is short. So don't ignore those things while you
reach for your bigger goals. With that said, there are few crucial timemanagement tips for getting the well-known job done.
1.
Set goals the right way.
There's
a right and wrong way to set goals. If you don't set your goals the right way,
then you'll lack the proper targets, which will force you to fall off track.
But when you set them the right way, the sky is the limit. Use the SMART goal setting method
to help you see things through. And when you do set those goals, make sure you
have powerful deep down meanings for wanting to achieve them.
2. Find a good time
management system.
One of
the tips for managing your time is to find the right system to
actually do it. The quadrant time-management system is probably the most
effective. It splits your activities into four quadrants based on urgency and importance.
Things are either urgent or important, both, or neither. Neither (quadrant 4)
are the activities that you want to stay away from, but it's the
not-urgent-but-important quadrant (2) that you want to focus on.
3. Audit your time for
seven days straight.
Spend
seven days straight assessing how you spend the time you do have right
now. What are you doing? Record it in a journal or on your phone. Split this up
into blocks of 30 minutes or an hour. What did you get done? Was it time
wasted? Was it well spent? If you use the quadrant system, circle or log the
quadrant that the activity was associated with. At the end of the
seven days, tally up all the numbers. Where did you spend the most time?
Which quadrants? The results might shock you.
4. Spend your mornings on
Most Important Task’s.
Mark
Twain once said, "If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first
thing in the morning. And If it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat
the biggest one first." His point? Tackle your biggest tasks in the
morning. These are your most
important tasks (MITs) of the day. Accomplishing
those will give you the biggest momentum to help you sail through the rest of
the day.
5. Follow the 80-20 rule.
Another
great time management tip is to use the 80-20 Rule, also known as the Pareto Principle. This
rule states that 80% of the efforts come from 20 percent of the results.
In sales, it also means that 80 percent of the sales come from 20 percent of
the customers. The trick? Identify the 20 percent of the efforts that are
producing 80 percent of the results and scale that out. You can do this
with meticulous tracking and analysis.
6. Instill keystone habits
into your life.
Charles
Duhig poignantly coined the keystone habit in his book entitled, The
Power of Habit. In architecture, the keystone is the stone that holds
all other stones in place. Similarly, keystone
habits help to not only solicit other good habits but also help to eliminate bad habits as well. Focus on keystone habits
and you'll get much better at managing your overall time by making your habit
development much easier.
7. Schedule email response
times.
Turn
off your email throughout the day. When your email is pouring in, it's easy to
get distracted. Schedule time to read and respond to emails. If there's
something urgent, someone will call or text you. But when you have your email
open, those distractions interrupt your thought flow and it's harder to get
back on track.
8. Eliminate bad habits.
One of
the biggest time-wasters we have are our bad habits. Whether it's Netflix
binge-watching, excessively surfing social media, playing games, going out
frequently to drink with friends, or so on, those bad habits take away the precious little time that we do have. Use your time wisely by eliminating your
bad habits if you're serious about achieving big goals in life.
9. Take frequent breaks
when working.
One study suggests that you should work for 52 minutes and
break for 17. You might not have the luxury to do that. But you should take
frequent breaks. If you're an entrepreneur working for yourself, this is
crucial. It's easy to run on fumes and not even know it. Keep your mental,
emotional and physical states at peak levels by breaking frequently.
10. Meditate or exercise
every morning.
You
might not think that this will help to better manage your time, but meditating
and exercising every single morning gives you balance. Cut the toxins out of
your life and get serious by doing this and watch as your energy, stamina and
mental focus takes a drastic shift.
11. Make to-do lists in the
evening for the next day.
Every single evening before bed, make a list for the next day. Look at your goals and
see what you can do to help move you closer. This doesn't happen overnight. It
takes time. But by making to-do lists, you're effectively setting goals for the
day. Daily goals are easier to achieve while helping to move us towards the
longer and bigger goals. But that happens by creating to-do lists.
12. Find inspiration when
you're feeling lackluster.
Turn
to YouTube, TED Talks and any other inspirational source you can turn to when you're lacking inspiration. It's hard to stay on track with your time when you lose that drive inside of you. Find ways you can turn the fire back on by focusing on inspiring content and seeking out others who've achieved big goals.
13. Get a mentor who can
guide you.
Finding
a mentor is crucial. It's easy to get distracted and dissuaded when you don't
have someone guiding you. But when you can personally rely on someone who's
been through the wringer and can help you achieve your goals, it's easier to
stay on track with your time. Find a good mentor that can help you along your
path.
14. Turn off social
media app alerts.
Incessant
social media app alerts aren't helping you with your time. It's definitely
hurting you. Turn them off. You don't need alerts every moment or to know
everything happening with your friends. It's not important. What's most
important is to have some peace of mind and be better able to focus on the task
at hand.
15. Declutter and organize.
Studies have determined that clutter
in our environment helps us to lose focus. When we lose focus, we lose time. If
you want to avoid that, declutter and organize. Don't do it all at once. Start
small. One drawer today.A shelf tomorrow.Maybe a closet the next day.Just one
per day. You build momentum and eventually find yourself turning into an
organizing warrior.