Sleep: 8 hoursExercise: 1 hour
Work: 8 hours
Eating: 2 hours (leisurely)
Hygiene: 1 hour
Travel: 1 hour (Commuting back and forth)
That would leave you a whole three hours for time with friends or family, shopping, preparing meals, chores, errands, sex, and of course homework. If you have a dentist appointment, or your talkative relative calls, or if American Idol has a two-hour special, you’re tapped out.
It’s a challenge to live a happy life if you aren’t giving enough attention to all of those categories, yet doing so is nearly impossible.
One time management strategy is to become independently wealthy, freeing up eight hours a day. But that option isn’t available to many of us. And apparently it isn’t all that fulfilling because most rich people continue to work full schedules.
Another strategy is to ignore the fact that you would be slowly killing yourself and decide to sleep and exercise less. That frees up several hours a day. The only downside is that you get fat and die.
A third time management path is to work less than you could, live economically, enjoy each day as it comes, and try not to think about living on cat food when you retire.
Which strategy have you picked?
Well I am here to say there is a better way!
Time management skills are especially important for chronically stressed New Yorkers, who often find themselves performing many different jobs during the course of a single day. These time management tips will help you increase your productivity and stay cool and collected.
1) Realize that time management is a myth.
No matter how organized we are, there are always only 24 hours in a day. Time doesn't change. All we can actually manage is ourselves and what we do with the time that we have.
2) Create goals.
Remember, the focus of time management is actually changing your behaviors, not changing time. A good place to start is by figuring our what the goal is for your day. Prioritize everything else around this. You should start each day with a time management session prioritizing the tasks for that day and setting your performance benchmark, using something like the chart below. Put your day's tasks in one of the boxes depending on if it is URGENT or NOT URGENT to get to today, and if it is IMPORTANT or NOT IMPORTANT to your long term goals. If you have 20 tasks for a given day, how many of them do you truly need to accomplish today?
3) It’s all about PLANNING!Think of this as an extension of time management tip #2. The objective is to change your behaviors over time to achieve whatever general goal you've set for yourself, such as increasing your productivity or decreasing your stress. So you need to not only set your specific goals, but allocate your effort to meet those goals. Write down how much time you will spend on your priorities each day, and track them over time to see whether or not you're accomplishing them, and what is derailing you.
4) Eliminate personal time-wasters.
For one week, for example, set a goal that you're not going to take personal phone calls while you're working. Or you’re not going to reply to text messages as soon as they come in. Or you’re not going to check e-mails every hour and stop to respond to them. We eat up a lot of unnecessary time during our day by interrupting our productivity with other distractions. Control the time you spend on such distractions and you’ll accomplish more during the day. For instance, reading and answering email can consume your whole day if you let it. Instead, set a limit of one hour a day for this task and stick to it.
5) Establish routines and stick to them as much as possible.
While crises will arise, you'll be much more productive if you can follow routines most of the time. Routines are time savers because they lessen the amount of time you need to decide what to do next.
6) Be sure your systems are organized.
Are you wasting a lot of time looking for things? Take the time to organize. Develop systems. Is your computer filing system slowing you down? Redo it, so it's organized to the point that you can quickly lay your hands on what you need. What other things can you organize?
7) Don't waste time waiting.
From getting stuck on the subway to doctors appointments, it's impossible to avoid waiting for someone or something. But you don't need to just sit there and twiddle your thumbs. Always take something to do with you, such as a report you need to read, a checkbook that needs to be balanced, or just a blank pad of paper that you can use to plan your day. Technology makes it easy to work wherever you are; your PDA and/or cell phone will help you stay connected.
You CAN be in control and accomplish what you want to accomplish - once you've come to grips with the time management myth and taken control of your time.
Which one(s) of these ideas would work for you? Are there any other time management ideas can you think of?
