How can you become a true expert at handling your most precious resource – your time? Among the top reasons why people are chronically stressed is having too little time for everything that needs to be done in a day. In a previous blog post, we touched upon the reality of the overworked adult in America.
Overwork is often the result of needing to develop time management skills, because let’s face it: things can get out of hand very quickly if you don’t know how you’re actually spending your time.
Our newest blog series will cover the best practices in time management so that you can start maximizing all available hours in your working day.
What are the best ways to manage your time?
1. Discover Where Your Time Goes – The first step in effective time management is knowing how you are actually spending your time every single day.
In order to accomplish this, you have to start recording your activities from the moment you wake up until bedtime. Do this for at least two weeks so you that can see the average trend for different activities.
Sometimes, people become more efficient with how they use their time when they are logging their activities. You must not be too self-conscious during the observation period so that you can get a realistic tally of how you are spending your time on a regular day.
In addition to recording your activities and the average amount of time spent for each activity, I want you to rate each activity from 1-4, with 1 being “waste of my time” and 5 being “excellent use of my time.” 2’s and 3’s are “a little time consuming” and a “good use of my time,” respectively.
You'll soon see a detailed picture of your actual use of time as you continue journaling and recording your daily activities. The information that you'll get from this exercise will help guide future time management efforts.
2. Start Transforming Your Activities – Time management problems are often the result of having too many unnecessary activities throughout the day. Some of these activities, such as watching TV, may not exactly be completely harmful if you can learn how to control how much time you devote to them.
However, if you are constantly missing deadlines and you’re extremely stressed about not having sufficient time for all the things that you want to do, then there could be something wrong to change with your selection of activities.
Transforming your daily activities is actually quite simple. First, you need to write down all the things that you need additional time for. Don’t hold back when making this list – write down anything that comes to mind.
My first list actually looked something like this:
- Self care
- Learning and growing
- Reading
- Spending more time with family and spouse
- Playing and having fun
Creating these lists may look silly to some of you, but it is an important step that can help with turning things around by identifying the activities that consumed too much time in my day.
You’ll find time for what matters more to you, by simply being mindful of all your activities and by asking yourself if you really need to spend time on the activity at all.
Common distractions can easily be removed from your list of routines if you choose to be more mindful of where your time is actually going.
Sure, you may be spending 8 to 10 hours per day in the office. However, if you’re barely coping with the workload, it’s possible that you’re not making wise use of your available time.
3. Change How You Do Things – If your days are filled with activities that are essential to your work or family life but you’re still falling behind, it would be helpful to change how you do things.
Changing your approach to accomplishing your commitments and responsibilities can help you reduce the time needed to accomplish each task, which will effectively give you more time for additional activities, or even leisure.
Here’s a good example – how many times do you check your email every day? Many people respond that they check their email every hour.
Now assuming that it takes about 10 minutes to open your email and scroll through your messages, that’s already 60 minutes gone in a day after the sixth visit to the inbox.
This trend can be remedied by limiting the checking of emails to two or three times a day. Urgent emails may be answered, but on an average day, a person shouldn’t be preoccupied with checking email.
Watch out for part 2 for one of my favorite time-tested method of creating beautiful order in an otherwise chaotic world.
Listening To Your Body For Better Health
For many of us, better health does not come naturally. It is usually something we must work on in order to lead healthy lives and have overall excellent health. This means listening to your body and understanding what it is telling you about what is going on inside the body. Here are some ways you can listen to your body so you can have a life that is sustained by good health.
5 Ways To A More Balanced Life
Creating a work-life balance can be tough. It is very hard to find the delicate balance between a happy boss and happy home life. There are a few things that you should do both at work and at home to create a balanced life.
10 Ways To Combat Fatigue And Increase Your Vitality
We live in a society of tired and worn out people. Many people have desk jobs or sit around all day, which, while not using much actual energy, tends to make us feel zapped and more tired because physical movement begets energy. We run around from work to chores to home where we face more chores without the needed energy to accomplish these tasks. We spend weekends stuck to gaming systems, television screens and spend little time in the fresh air.
