Managing your Time

So many times I have been overwhelmed with how much I have to do, I make plans to do them, but at the end of the day, I would have achieved less than half of what I had planned...why? I didn't manage my time well. Managing your time, just like planning, takes a good amount of self discipline for it to be a success...*light bulb* maybe I should do a post on developing self discipline, hmm, I would definitely look into that, but today, we're talking time management...so, shall we?

Managing your time means consciously planning out every activity of your day to have a scheduled time, a time it should start and a time it should end...don't worry, it's not as robotic as it sounds, it's just a way for you to get things done efficiently and effectively...

For about a week, take note of how you spend your time, productive and non-productive time, and make sure to record your 'findings'. This will help you understand better where the hours of your days are going and what not to spend your precious hours on. With this, you can gauge how many hours you have available to you to be productive.

By now you should have figured out the activities that are beneficial to your goal being achieved. This is when you assign a particular time of the day to your productive activities. Remember, you are scheduling a start and end time. At least 60% of your time should be spent on things (conversations, thinking/brainstorming, activities) that will help you produce results.

Your scheduling time is very important, plan the time you're going to use to plan your time...take out 20-30 minutes before your day begins to schedule your days activities. If possible, create your schedule a day before. Schedules should be made before the start of the your day.

Schedule time for interruptions, plan the times in which you'll be away from you work. It could be to attend one event or the other. Also have miscellaneous time planned out, time you'll use to take breaks. Lunch break, snack break or "xyz" break.

Before every scheduled activity, take a few minutes to think about the result you want to achieve from that particular activity. When the activity is done, take some time to think about if you achieved your desired result. Evaluate your performance and if you didn't do so well, think about how the process can be improved upon. Apart from helping you keep track of your goals, it helps you improve on ways to achieve them.

When you have to get work done, you must ignore every form of distraction. Ignore calls if you have to. Log out of your instant message accounts. Social media should be tucked in a corner, unless you need it for work purposes of course. Give people your attention only if it is crucial and beneficial to your business. Asides from wasting time, these things could distract your train of thought and you need to stay focused as much as possible. If you want, you can schedule a time to return calls, and reply messages.

Keep in mind that you may not always finish all you have to do in a day, but you should be sure of getting at most 80% of work done.

So tell me guys, how do you manage your own time? I would love to hear from you in the comments.

P.S: Many many thanks to Tope of toperants.com for inspiring this post.

Photo credit: pixabay.com