There are only 24 hours in a day. That will never change. All you can do is make the most of your time and manage it effectively. Time management is the foundation to striking a balance between work and the rest of your busy life. It?s also vital to keeping stress at bay. Learning to manage your time is a process, and it?s different for everybody. The key is to figure out exactly how you?re spending your time and then reorganizing that time so it?s consistent with your priorities.
Figuring out how you really spend your time may take a while. Start by mapping out your typical 24-hour days. When exactly do you wake up every morning and go to sleep every night? How long is your commute? How frequently do you check your emails at work and how long does it take you to do so? How long do you surf the Internet? When do you start making dinner and how long does that take? How much TV do you watch at night? Every single (reoccurring) task that you perform throughout the day needs to be taken into consideration and kept track of.
If you know how long it takes you to perform tasks and when you are typically performing them, it will be much easier for you to put together a daily schedule. If you know all of the different tasks that you perform throughout the day, eliminating the ones that are wasteful and causing you to have chaos will also be much easier.
Now that you know how you are spending your time, prioritize it. What is truly important to you? Doing well at work? Spending quality time with your family? Living a healthy life? Going to church? Walking your dog? Playing poker with the guys? Going to lunch with the girls? Whatever it is that?s important to you, write it down and then rank it. Knowing how you really want to be spending your time will go a long way in helping you schedule your day-to-day life.
When you finally do get to the scheduling process, factor in all of those miniscule, easily overlooked tasks. Also, factor in some breathing room and some time for yourself. If it helps, cut out big blocks of time that are for either finishing up the tasks you couldn?t finish earlier or for nothing at all.
Here are some other quick tips to effectively managing your time:
It's important to remember that complete control over your time is a myth. There are always going to be days when things aren?t going to go the way you planned. Keeping those days to a minimum, however, is where effective time management comes in to play. What you have to get through your head though, is that effective time management isn't possible if you try to accomplish every single little thing you?d like to accomplish. Consider your priorities and pick your battles accordingly.
