If you look at your time management skills, you find that no matter what amount of hours you are given, it seems like there is no one time you will say – that’s enough for. Your body and mind are wired to shift their ability to handle tasks depending on how you train them. If you train your brain to take 15 minutes to attempt a math problem, it will condition itself to that schedule. If you train it to take 9 minutes, it will try working fast and attempt the math in that timeframe.
So, depending on how you train your brain, it may work fast or slow – so you may not say that you have sufficient time at any one given time unless you train the brain to accomplish tasks at a particular pace. Time management is a rewarding skill – it can push you far in your life – professionally and personally.
If you aren’t making the most of your time, soon or later you will be in an uproar state – a state where everything is going haywire. Managing your time effectively results in better task management, reduces stress levels, high productivity, and better work-life balance.
Being a very essential aspect of life, time needs a lot of respect. Only when you have learned to master the art of managing time, will your life experience a positive change. You want to take hold of every second, every minute, and every hour in your life – but it doesn’t come easily – you should understand what effective time management means to your life and how you can achieve it.
Sometimes, we work so hard to achieve so little, other times we work so smart to achieve so much. Also, sometimes we handle multiple tasks thinking that we are going to accomplish them fast only to find that were are dragging our efforts and energy levels. It’s only when we learn that multitasking doesn’t give impressive results do we turn to take one job at a time.
There are time management tips that if you follow them, you will see a shift in your productivity and your life will change drastically – not for the worse – but the better. So, use these seven time management tips – they will change your life.
1. Set SMART Goals – And, do it Seriously
You need to set goals – and not just goals, but SMART goals. And, there is a way to set them, you don’t just write down anything you think you will do. You might set goals the wrong way – if you do this, you won’t reach your productivity, but when you do it right, your productivity is going to reach the sky.
Your goals should be – Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound. That’s what SMART stands for. These goals are going to bring a concrete structure within your life and they will prepare you adequately to face uphill battles you may face when doing your work. SMART goals also promote your self-confidence.
You should be able to achieve your goals easily, and they should be measurable. If you can’t measure what you have attempted, then you cannot know whether you need to improve or not. Additionally, if you set impractical goals, you won’t be able to realize them. Give yourself a timeframe in which you should reach each goal you have set. Sometimes, you can break the goals into smaller milestones or sub-goals so that you attempt one after the other.
The idea of having SMART goals is to allow you to increase your effectiveness in working.
Also, let your goals be specific, have a target to hit. For example, you can say, “I want to hit 200 sales of motorcycle Helmets per week”. You need to be able to track what you have attained, and you can put that is the progress chart. This way, you can determine what amount of work is left to accomplish. Setting unrealistic goals is only going to frustrate you. Ensure you have doable milestones, objectives, and goals.
2. Allow your Mornings for MITs – That’s most important tasks
Aim at tackling the important tasks first in the morning – don’t wait until later, because you may not get the time to do them. If you have several of the most important tasks, begin with the urgent one. You will need to prioritize tasks so that you have a chronological order in which you will attempt them. It is impossible to leave out prioritization when talking about time management. It’s only when you know what you are supposed to do, and when, that you will be able to effectively manage your time.
Take the time-consuming or difficult task; accomplish it – after that focus on other things. Remember that as hours elapse, your brain is getting tired and if you have a task that requires you to think, you may not be able to do it when the brain feels exhausted. The earlier you handle that task, the better of you are to accomplish it right.
3. Discover your Zone- when you are most Productive
If you have observed your pattern of working, you may have realized that there are hours when you are more focused – with a laser-sharp concentration. Your productivity shoots up. You achieve so much in so little time. During this time, your mind is in total harmony with the surrounding conditions. This is called the “zone” or “flow” and without identifying it, you may remain unproductive in your work because you don’t utilize that “zone” to achieve your most.
Discovering your flow allows you to properly utilize your time. This flow helps you hit an optimal level of consciousness in which your mind feels and performs the best. And it’s not just the mind, but also the physical body. The body and the mind work in harmony or they work hand in hand - they signal each other.
4. Don’t allow Distractions – Do away with Them in your Life
We are in the age of information – the internet, smartphones, tablets, and other gadgets make part of your daily life. You are seeing more and more people spending a lot of their chatting or receiving calls. Social media has become such a big thing – however, if not careful, these activities can interfere with your day to day activities. You need to see how you can avoid distractions like phone calls, emails, social media messages, and other things in the workplace or when you are working on a task. These are the biggest distractions you face.
Workplace distractions can make you waste 759 hours each year – this is time you will never recover in life. It may be time you could have done your most important tasks. It could be the time you could have attempted the most difficult problems in life.
A task that you would finish in 30 minutes can take you up to two hours to accomplish. When working on important or high-priority tasks, it is paramount that you get your phone to silent mode or turn off data. You can save a lot of time if you observe this – you take your levels of efficiency a notch higher.
5. Stop multitasking – It’s a waste of Time
You may call yourself the juggler because you take up too many tasks at a go – that’s not something to make you proud – it’s actually not good for you. Research shows that only about 2 percent of individuals are able to effectively multitask, the other 98 percent will only fail in achieving their target. They will be wasting their time meaning their productivity diminishes. Rather than dividing your attention among different tasks, it is better you focus entirely on a single task, accomplish it, and move to the next.
You can even make your work more effective by timeboxing the tasks. When talking about timeboxing, it refers to the allocation of time-frames to different tasks. This way, you know how much time you need for this task and how much you need for that task. Timeboxing increases your chances of successfully finishing or accomplishing the different tasks. Always ensure dedication to your work and respect your time.
6. Find inspirations – Thinks in the lines of Audiobooks, videos, quotes
Adhering to a specific pattern or a to-do-list can be boring. You may find it hard to concentrate on tasks if you are not totally motivated in yourself. Rather than wasting your precious time doing unproductive things, you may want to utilize that time to inspire yourself.
It’s likely you have come across inspiring quotes- record them, and especially those related to time management. Consider watching motivational videos – the likes of TEDx. You can choose audiobooks where you listen to motivational speakers talking about time management tactics and tips at the workplace. Alternatively, you can decide to take a walk – it’s healthy because it rejuvenates the mind and body.
You have likely heard it and most of us do it – this is procrastination. It’s that time you spend doing nothing or engaging in useless activities. People with chronic procrastination get high in holding doing work – they put important things aside and opt to do them later even when they know that time is not on their side. When it becomes too late to accomplish the tasks, they start panicking. If you allow procrastination to take over your life, you will not achieve your peak productivity. Let it just be a part of your way of life. The good thing is that there are ways to can deal with the phenomenon.
You may want to break your task into smaller tasks that are easy to achieve. Have you ever realized that when you are hungry and you are given a plate of your favorite food that is filled to the brim, you only attempt eating some and the rest becomes a leftover? However, if you were to get a small portion at first of the food, you eat it and finish, then add some more, you eat and finish, and add some more… this way you are able to eat a larger amount of food than that which had been filled to the brim in one plate.
Breaking the tasks into small tasks makes the work doable; it also gives you a point where to begin the work. Again, you can deal with the problem of procrastination by creating detailed timelines that offer you a clear deadline. Surround yourself with individuals who always take actions and attempt their goals instantly, this way you will absorb their habits and working patterns making you be more proactive in work.
7. Get adequate Sleep – at Least 7 to 8 hours
The number of hours you dedicate to sleep can have a big impact on your body. Too few or too many hours will impact you negatively. You have to leverage the hours you sleep and ensure you have good sleep patterns – no repeated interruptions. Of course, the occasional – one or two - wakeups to head to the loo won’t bring adverse effects. At least you need to dedicate about 7 to 8 hours to sleep. With these hours, you not only rouse fresh but also reenergized. It also leads to a healthy lifestyle.
Not getting enough sleep can put you at risk of suffering from conditions like obstructive sleep apnea or obesity and diseases like diabetes.
Again, your mind makes better decisions and performs more efficiently when you’ve had good rest. You can make decisions about your work schedule- what to do and when to do it. So, make a point to develop a schedule for sleeping; make sure you stick to it daily. Try adjusting yourself to get to bed and wake at a particular time. You may want to use apps like Sleep Cycle, Calm, and others that help track your sleeping patterns; they will help you know when you had sleep interruptions. They also help you have a calm, sound sleep. This way, you wake up a focused person.
Conclusion
These are some of the tips you can follow to allow you to manage your time properly and increase your productivity. You will be surprised how productive you can be if you put these tips into practice. Ensure that you have discipline in time management and focus to accomplish your goals in time.
So, depending on how you train your brain, it may work fast or slow – so you may not say that you have sufficient time at any one given time unless you train the brain to accomplish tasks at a particular pace. Time management is a rewarding skill – it can push you far in your life – professionally and personally.
If you aren’t making the most of your time, soon or later you will be in an uproar state – a state where everything is going haywire. Managing your time effectively results in better task management, reduces stress levels, high productivity, and better work-life balance.
Being a very essential aspect of life, time needs a lot of respect. Only when you have learned to master the art of managing time, will your life experience a positive change. You want to take hold of every second, every minute, and every hour in your life – but it doesn’t come easily – you should understand what effective time management means to your life and how you can achieve it.
Sometimes, we work so hard to achieve so little, other times we work so smart to achieve so much. Also, sometimes we handle multiple tasks thinking that we are going to accomplish them fast only to find that were are dragging our efforts and energy levels. It’s only when we learn that multitasking doesn’t give impressive results do we turn to take one job at a time.
There are time management tips that if you follow them, you will see a shift in your productivity and your life will change drastically – not for the worse – but the better. So, use these seven time management tips – they will change your life.
1. Set SMART Goals – And, do it Seriously
You need to set goals – and not just goals, but SMART goals. And, there is a way to set them, you don’t just write down anything you think you will do. You might set goals the wrong way – if you do this, you won’t reach your productivity, but when you do it right, your productivity is going to reach the sky.
Your goals should be – Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound. That’s what SMART stands for. These goals are going to bring a concrete structure within your life and they will prepare you adequately to face uphill battles you may face when doing your work. SMART goals also promote your self-confidence.
You should be able to achieve your goals easily, and they should be measurable. If you can’t measure what you have attempted, then you cannot know whether you need to improve or not. Additionally, if you set impractical goals, you won’t be able to realize them. Give yourself a timeframe in which you should reach each goal you have set. Sometimes, you can break the goals into smaller milestones or sub-goals so that you attempt one after the other.
The idea of having SMART goals is to allow you to increase your effectiveness in working.
Also, let your goals be specific, have a target to hit. For example, you can say, “I want to hit 200 sales of motorcycle Helmets per week”. You need to be able to track what you have attained, and you can put that is the progress chart. This way, you can determine what amount of work is left to accomplish. Setting unrealistic goals is only going to frustrate you. Ensure you have doable milestones, objectives, and goals.
2. Allow your Mornings for MITs – That’s most important tasks
Aim at tackling the important tasks first in the morning – don’t wait until later, because you may not get the time to do them. If you have several of the most important tasks, begin with the urgent one. You will need to prioritize tasks so that you have a chronological order in which you will attempt them. It is impossible to leave out prioritization when talking about time management. It’s only when you know what you are supposed to do, and when, that you will be able to effectively manage your time.
Take the time-consuming or difficult task; accomplish it – after that focus on other things. Remember that as hours elapse, your brain is getting tired and if you have a task that requires you to think, you may not be able to do it when the brain feels exhausted. The earlier you handle that task, the better of you are to accomplish it right.
3. Discover your Zone- when you are most Productive
If you have observed your pattern of working, you may have realized that there are hours when you are more focused – with a laser-sharp concentration. Your productivity shoots up. You achieve so much in so little time. During this time, your mind is in total harmony with the surrounding conditions. This is called the “zone” or “flow” and without identifying it, you may remain unproductive in your work because you don’t utilize that “zone” to achieve your most.
Discovering your flow allows you to properly utilize your time. This flow helps you hit an optimal level of consciousness in which your mind feels and performs the best. And it’s not just the mind, but also the physical body. The body and the mind work in harmony or they work hand in hand - they signal each other.
4. Don’t allow Distractions – Do away with Them in your Life
We are in the age of information – the internet, smartphones, tablets, and other gadgets make part of your daily life. You are seeing more and more people spending a lot of their chatting or receiving calls. Social media has become such a big thing – however, if not careful, these activities can interfere with your day to day activities. You need to see how you can avoid distractions like phone calls, emails, social media messages, and other things in the workplace or when you are working on a task. These are the biggest distractions you face.
Workplace distractions can make you waste 759 hours each year – this is time you will never recover in life. It may be time you could have done your most important tasks. It could be the time you could have attempted the most difficult problems in life.
A task that you would finish in 30 minutes can take you up to two hours to accomplish. When working on important or high-priority tasks, it is paramount that you get your phone to silent mode or turn off data. You can save a lot of time if you observe this – you take your levels of efficiency a notch higher.
5. Stop multitasking – It’s a waste of Time
You may call yourself the juggler because you take up too many tasks at a go – that’s not something to make you proud – it’s actually not good for you. Research shows that only about 2 percent of individuals are able to effectively multitask, the other 98 percent will only fail in achieving their target. They will be wasting their time meaning their productivity diminishes. Rather than dividing your attention among different tasks, it is better you focus entirely on a single task, accomplish it, and move to the next.
You can even make your work more effective by timeboxing the tasks. When talking about timeboxing, it refers to the allocation of time-frames to different tasks. This way, you know how much time you need for this task and how much you need for that task. Timeboxing increases your chances of successfully finishing or accomplishing the different tasks. Always ensure dedication to your work and respect your time.
6. Find inspirations – Thinks in the lines of Audiobooks, videos, quotes
Adhering to a specific pattern or a to-do-list can be boring. You may find it hard to concentrate on tasks if you are not totally motivated in yourself. Rather than wasting your precious time doing unproductive things, you may want to utilize that time to inspire yourself.
It’s likely you have come across inspiring quotes- record them, and especially those related to time management. Consider watching motivational videos – the likes of TEDx. You can choose audiobooks where you listen to motivational speakers talking about time management tactics and tips at the workplace. Alternatively, you can decide to take a walk – it’s healthy because it rejuvenates the mind and body.
You have likely heard it and most of us do it – this is procrastination. It’s that time you spend doing nothing or engaging in useless activities. People with chronic procrastination get high in holding doing work – they put important things aside and opt to do them later even when they know that time is not on their side. When it becomes too late to accomplish the tasks, they start panicking. If you allow procrastination to take over your life, you will not achieve your peak productivity. Let it just be a part of your way of life. The good thing is that there are ways to can deal with the phenomenon.
You may want to break your task into smaller tasks that are easy to achieve. Have you ever realized that when you are hungry and you are given a plate of your favorite food that is filled to the brim, you only attempt eating some and the rest becomes a leftover? However, if you were to get a small portion at first of the food, you eat it and finish, then add some more, you eat and finish, and add some more… this way you are able to eat a larger amount of food than that which had been filled to the brim in one plate.
Breaking the tasks into small tasks makes the work doable; it also gives you a point where to begin the work. Again, you can deal with the problem of procrastination by creating detailed timelines that offer you a clear deadline. Surround yourself with individuals who always take actions and attempt their goals instantly, this way you will absorb their habits and working patterns making you be more proactive in work.
7. Get adequate Sleep – at Least 7 to 8 hours
The number of hours you dedicate to sleep can have a big impact on your body. Too few or too many hours will impact you negatively. You have to leverage the hours you sleep and ensure you have good sleep patterns – no repeated interruptions. Of course, the occasional – one or two - wakeups to head to the loo won’t bring adverse effects. At least you need to dedicate about 7 to 8 hours to sleep. With these hours, you not only rouse fresh but also reenergized. It also leads to a healthy lifestyle.
Not getting enough sleep can put you at risk of suffering from conditions like obstructive sleep apnea or obesity and diseases like diabetes.
Again, your mind makes better decisions and performs more efficiently when you’ve had good rest. You can make decisions about your work schedule- what to do and when to do it. So, make a point to develop a schedule for sleeping; make sure you stick to it daily. Try adjusting yourself to get to bed and wake at a particular time. You may want to use apps like Sleep Cycle, Calm, and others that help track your sleeping patterns; they will help you know when you had sleep interruptions. They also help you have a calm, sound sleep. This way, you wake up a focused person.
Conclusion
These are some of the tips you can follow to allow you to manage your time properly and increase your productivity. You will be surprised how productive you can be if you put these tips into practice. Ensure that you have discipline in time management and focus to accomplish your goals in time.
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