We have learned about the time saver to save us from the time killer. But let us take a closer look about our time savers. In this article we will learn more about our time savers.
Telephones
Surprise Surprise, I had included telephones under the list of time killers but telephones are in fact one of the best time savers that man has invented. Just imagine the amount of time you get to save by just making a telephone call.
Suppose you are to have a business lunch (sometimes called a working lunch) with an important client. Obviously you have to reserve a table in your favorite restaurant. Now, imagine you have to go there in person and get things done directly. The task would easily take away at least two or three hours of your time when you take into account the journey, the traffic and all that. On the other hand, this is something you can easily do over the telephone while you are comfortably seated in your office.
So telephones are certainly one of the best time savers in this world. But of course, it all depends on how you use the telephone.
Computers
I dont think that enough can be said about the time saving roles of the computer. But then I dont think that I have to say much. I suppose every one will agree that computers are indeed time-saving machines.
Elevators
Next we come to elevators and elevators too we know save a lot of time that we would other wise have to spend plodding up flights and flights of steps. Elevators save not just time but energy as well. But one annoying thing about elevators is that sometimes even f we punch the button repeatedly, the elevator takes for ever to reach or floor.
Now, if you just have to go two or three floors up or down in such cases it is always better to take the stairs instead of waiting ten or fifteen minutes for the elevator to come to your floor. It is better for your health too, top climb a few stairs every day.
Fax machines
Like telephones, fax machines too save a lot of time by enabling us to send important documents across continents if needed and that too within a few seconds.
The internet
It goes without saying that the internet has revolutionized our concept of time itself. With facilities like email, scanners, voicemail and video conferencing, even the fax machine has become outdated. Talk about fast.
Coffee machines
I did it on purpose. When people see that a coffee machine has been included among the list of time savers, they tend to screw up their noses and raise their eyebrows. But would you believe that earlier, before coffee machines had made their presence felt in offices, people used to take coffee breaks that lasted up to half an hour?
Bulletin or Notice Boards
Bulletin and Notice Boards are very time effective way of reaching out to a large number of people. Instead of conducting one of those long meetings in which every one gets a chance to go on and on, it is is bets to convey messages with the help of notice boards and bulletins which can be displayed at a place accessible to all. Oh yes, then comes the question of how to make sure that the message is read by all those concerned.
Simple, include space on the notice where the concerned people can put down their initials as proof that they have read the message.
From this article we learned, how the time savers can be so useful for us, especially in our busy lives. They are not only helping us to accomplish our work, but they are also helping us to reach our goal in our life.
People live in different situation. As each of the people have different needs. People who live in the city have different needs than the people who live in a farm. But each of them has the same thing time. In this article we will see a sample of a man called Bob, who spend his life in a farm.
Now that you are acquainted with Ben I would like you to meet Bob. Bob lives in the country. He has a farm. It is not a very big farm; it is one of those medium sized farms from which you can get enough produce to make both ends meet. Bob is up at when the cock crows at five in the morning. As soon as he is up, he goes to his dairy and milks his three cows.
I must add that Bob does not walk, he ambles. Having milked the cows he heads back to the farm and sits down with his morning paper. He chats leisurely with his wife who is going about her daily business. Around 8 he hops into his tractor and drives to the nearby dairy to deliver the milk. There he meets a couple of his friends and spends a good half hour exchanging news with them. He gets back to the farm at nine and has a relaxed breakfast.
When breakfast is over, he puts on his straw-hat and taking his dog along starts his daily excursion among his cornfields. His corn has a couple a weeks to go before harvest and now there is nothing much to do but walk around inspecting the rat traps. At eleven he is back at the farm and settles down to listen to his radio playing some old favorite tunes. He has lunch at 1 and then settles down in his favorite chair for a long afternoon siesta. In the evening he again goes to milk his cows, gives them some fresh feed and has one more walk around the farm.
After dinner by seven, by eight he is in bed and the lights are out.
Lets admit it, Bobs life is so leisurely that we feel like screaming when we watch the pace at which he gets along. He is happy and contented and the only clock in his farm stopped ticking a few years ago. We cannot even draw a parallel line between the lives of bob and Ben. They are two worlds apart. The point I was trying to drive home is that it is our life style that decides how much time we have for each thing. The way we live and what we do decides how we spend our time and how much time we have to spend. We choose our life styles and that decides what we do with our time and that is why I said that we live in our own Time cages. (Psst I do not think there are many Bobs alive in the world today.)
So what kind of life do you live. We, that is most of us live in a world of aero planes, and jets, and fast cars and supercomputers and elevators and escalators, and electric trains and a thousand more contraptions and machines that are all intended to save time and do things faster.
Yeah, yeah we talk about convenience, but the fact is that all these machines were the result of man endeavor to get things done faster. And the result is that life moves so fast that we could get dizzy if we were to take a minute break and just look around at all the people whizzing around in the daily business called life.
Twenty four hours is hardly enough for us to finish a days work. And so what most working people do is that they start compromising on the other seemingly not so important thing like eating and getting eight hours sleep in the night. And so we have such a large number of people suffering from stress related diseases like ulcers, high blood pressure and heart problems.
From this story we see that Bob lives in a place where things move a bit slower than Ben who lives in a rushing city. But both of them has the similarity, they have the time they need to cope with.
Have you ever feel that it is not that easy to be more organized person. Sometimes we come out with the fact that the things are not as they have to be. Below are some hints to be come a more organized person.
1. Accept the fact that we cannot rely too much on our memories.
The human mind is exposed to a hurricane of information every day. As a result the mind does a very nice filtering process and very little of what we see and hear is retained in our minds. So instead of depending on our very selective memory why not depend on a piece of paper.
2. Carry a tiny scribbling pad and a pen with you all the time.
The moment you fix an appointment or are asked to attend a meeting, jot it down in the scribbling pad. Do not bother about others laughing at you. You will have the last laugh in the end.
3. It is a good idea to write it down orders in your book.
Each time you tell somebody to do something or when somebody like your boss asks you to do something write it down in your book along with the date and the time. Do not be afraid of being thought about as a person with a very poor memory. It wont be long before people start thinking of you as a highly organized person.
4. If you have an electronic pocket organizer be sure to use it.
Each time someone gives you his or her telephone number, immediately enter it into your pocket organizer, along with the person name of course.
5. Use the backside of business cards to help your memory.
Usually we get a lot of business cards as we go about our daily business of life. The business card of course contains the name of the person, his or her telephone number and probably the name of the firm for which the person works. But the problem is, the next time we meet the person, the face may seem familiar but we wont have the foggiest idea as to where we met the person. The best thing to do would be to jot down a few points about the person and probably the reason for meeting him or her and the place as well. This will certainly lessen the load on your memory centre. But take never to do it in front of the person.
6. Keep away the business cards properly
As soon as you get back to your office take care to keep away the business cards you collected properly.
Dont just stuff them into your card folder. Take care to read them properly and perhaps keep the cards of important clients separately. If you do not find much use for a person card, toss it.
7. Prepare a to-do list everyday.
I cannot over emphasize the importance of to-do lists in getting yourself organized. It is probably the most sensible thing that a busy person should do. In fact I thought of devoting an entire chapter for to-do lists and I think that is just what I will do.
8. Plan what you have to do well in advance.
It is a good idea to have daily, weekly and monthly plans. No this is not about expanding your business and things like that. I am not referring to a strategy plan that involves takeovers and mergers. Those things are beyond the scope of this book. I was referring to having plans about the daily, weekly and monthly activities of your business and yourself as well.
9. Have a fixed timetable.
It may seem kind of mechanical but it would be wonderful if you could have a fixed time for everything and try to stick religiously to the time table. Believe me it really helps because in that way you will have time for everything and everything can be done in the time for it.
And so you are now moving towards becoming a more organized person. But there are still miles to go before mastering the art of time management. And that brings us to our next chapter.
With the above articles, we know that we can be a more organized person if we want to have some effort.
Have you ever feel that you are running out of time before you can finish the homework? Or sometimes if you just sit down and think what day is it today and you realize that you have passed one week and you did not feel it.
It is quite surprising when you sit and think about where all the time in one day goes. Twenty four hours is really a lot of time. But on most days it scarcely seems enough. But this is because of certain misconceptions about time.
Let us proceed to carefully examine where all that time goes and find out if twenty four hours really is. For that I have listed out certain points which will help you to get a realistic view about how much time you really have in a day.
Point 1
We do not really get twenty four hours in a day. Maybe its because we always talk about the twenty four hours in a day, we get the feeling that we really do have twenty four hours to finish our daily business and the fact is that we do not. Assuming that you hit the sack at least by twelve in the night and taking for granted the fact that you need at least seven hours of sleep; let me fix your waking time at seven in the morning.
That means that you have already lost seven hours, which we can deduct from twenty four, giving us only fourteen waking hours. Waking hours does not mean the hours you take to wakeup but the hours that you are awake. So let us get that straight, we have only 14 hours in a day. Now if you think that all those fourteen hours can be used for productive work, you are wrong again. For we come to our next point.
Point 2
The fourteen waking hours cannot be used completely for productive work. There are many things that a human being should do in order to continue to live like a human being and some of theses things do take up a lot of time. Now the following list that I have drawn up is sure to vary from person to person. But I have taken the times for each action on what I felt to e reasonable times as far as any normal human being is concerned.
Taking a shower
Most of us take a shower at least once in a day and the time I think we can put down for that is ten minutes. For those of you cleaner ones who shower twice a day put that as twenty minutes.
Answering the call of nature
Oh yes, we are all very cultured people who have the best of manners and upbringing. We dress ourselves properly and conduct ourselves with the utmost poise. But there are several times in a day when we have to go back to nature and summing up all those things we do in the bath room I think a good half hour should be enough.
Getting ready and tidying ourselves
When we move about in society definitely we have to look our best and adding up all the minutes that we spend in front of that mirror, we get another ten minutes. For some people of course, this figure comes up to half an hour. But I think ten minutes is good enough.
From the above articles we found out that from the 24 hours which we have, we dont have exactly 24 hours to do many things. We have to choose which priorities in our lives which we need to be done first.
Are you one of those people who want to just read read read and think you have to learn everything about the business before you get out there and get your business going? Not True! I did that and found I wasted so much time and time is really valuable.
If you work your business from the heart, be honest and feel comfortable about how you are marketng yourself and your product, you will be a success! You really don't need to know everything, you will learn it as you go.
You can spend so much time reading files and listening to conferences, reading this blog and that article, it becomes mind boggeling. The more you read and listen the less time you are spending getting out there. Not that you shouldn't read and learn, that's not my point. The point is you need to be strict on your time allotment for your computer or you could be sucked in all day!
Your business is your own, so make it your own and do it your way, the way that feels best for you! Do your business first thing in the morning and save the afternoons or evenings for computer time. Maybe give yourself an hour or an hour and a half very early in the morning or late in the evening. That way you will leave most of the day for your "plan of action".
Sure it's fine to get ideas from team mates and articles so you can improve in certain areas, but make sure to set a limit on your time on the computer, because sure enough if you turn that computer on in the morning and start reading everything, pretty soon half the day is gone. So you say, "oh no, I guess it's too late to get out there today". I think that is called procrastination!
We tell ourselves we are just trying to learn everything there is to learn, but really, some of us are just reluctant to get out there! We learn by doing and if we work our businesses we will learn as we go. Hands on is the best way anyway!
So the bottom line is, your business is first, set yourself limits on the computer and make your business your own by doing it the best way that feels right and natural to you. Just learn as you go have integrity, honesty and a smile!!
We have heard the illustration about the pail, sands and rocks. If we can accommodate many things in one pail, we can do things in a particular time. In this article we will learn more about this illustration, and how can we learn from this illustration.
While you are trying to handle those rocks, do not forget those pebbles, marbles, and grains of sand and drops of water. Some people have asked me to give specific examples for these materials. So I would like to take a minute to compare. I believe that things like saying good morning and greeting others generally are very important if you are working in an organization. These things I would compare to the water. Just because you have had a busy day, it does not mean that you have to be a grouch.
Telephone calls (remember to be brief) I would liken to the sand. They keep coming all the time. And if you do not answer your telephone calls people will start thinking you do not work there anymore. Responding to emails and dispatching bills and payments can be compared to the marbles Meetings and discussions are the pebbles and major projects and things like audits and presentations are the rocks.
There should be time for everything and everything should have it is time.
And with this I would like to tell you to please discard the myth of perfection. It does not exist in this world. Nothing and I mean nothing is perfect. So, it is not really important that everything has to be shipshape. As long as it is presentable you dont have to lose sweat about a project that you have done. But that does not mean that your work should be shabby. Make it as presentable as is possible within the time frame allotted.
And in order to accomplish more within lesser time it is about time we took a look at those time savers and that takes us to our next chapter.
Time savers
Everything in this world has something to balance its existence. If there is white, there is black; if there is darkness there is light, if there are time wasters, there are time savers. So now let us focus our attention towards those time savers because they are our best friends when we talk about Time Management.
Again, as in the case of time killers, I am just listing out a few general examples over here. These are by no means the only time savers in the world.
The Top Ten Time Savers
Telephones
Computers
Elevators
Fax Machines
The Internet
Coffee Machines
Bulletin or Notice Boards
Photo Copiers
Efficient Filing Systems
Good Secretaries and Junior Staff
As we know that we used to do the thing which has come up only wasting our time. We need to know how to overcome this problem. The time saver will help you to use your time in more efficient. You need to recognize your time killer then you know how to handle your time killer with your time saver.
There are times in our lives that we have missed good chances because we were not aware how valuable time is. Time is a unique thing to understand, it goes by without you realize that you have not done things enough. In this article we will try to understand why it is very important to understand the meaning of time.
Personally I believe that there is something very humbling about this concept. Just imagine, man with all his power is just like a helpless babe before time. There it is Time stands tall and strong before man and man remains vulnerable and weak before it. Man, the big strong man who tamed rivers and seas, who reached out to the skies and beyond, who harnessed wind and water and dug up the bowels of the earth is but a worm before Time.
The best he can do to win the battle against time is die is hair and use some anti wrinkle cream on his face. In fact, the closest that man has got towards conquering time is those many history books that have been penned, they are of course chronicles of events that happened long ago and that is certainly not much to boast about.
And so now we come to our subject that is time management because after all the illustrations given above, I hope that I have made one point clear, that is that Time cannot be controlled, it can only be managed. And that is what we are going to do. We are going to learn the art of time management. I dont want you to have an air of helplessness. You might begin to feel that if the battle cannot be won, then what is point in putting up a struggle. Ah, but there you are missing out on a very important point. In all the illustrations that I used above, I was referring to man in general and not to one particular Tom, Dick or Harry.
So you can see that this aspect of time is applicable to every human being and there is no running away from it. Every person has only twenty four hours in a day and no force on earth can alter that. So in order to get the cutting edge what you have to do is to be able to manage your time in the most effective way possible.
And that is what Time management is all about. Its about managing your time effectively and if I may I would like to add the word efficiently too.
Now, when we talk about our resources, every one knows that we are referring to the resources like fossil fuels, forests, mineral wealth, and water bodies and so on. But surprisingly time is never included in this list. When we talk about non-renewable resources, fossil fuels like coal, petroleum and natural gas top the list. But, what about time. A point that most people tend to forget is that time is the most valuable resource that we have, and time once lost, is lost for ever. We can think about alternate sources of energy for fossil fuels like electricity, fuel cells, solar energy and the research goes on. But is there any alternative for time that is lost.
Again I stress on the point that time once lost, is lost forever. And hence we have the proverb, time and tide waits for no man.
It is very important to know that time will not wait or come back for us. Use the time in the efficient and useful manner before we start regretting the time which will never come back.
In making a plan there are particulars things which we need to know and we need to follow. In this article you will learn on how to make a good planning.
I thought it would be useful for you to have a brief overview of the different steps involved in planning.
The six steps in planning are
1.Set objectives
2.Assess you present situation
3.Survey your alternatives
4.Decide on the course of action
5.Provide for control
6.And Implement the plan
But whatever be the plan I again want to stress the point that a plan should always be TIME BOUND.
But as the project moves along, the plan should be flexible in the sense that it should incorporate any changes that might prove necessary ounce the project is put into action.
Planning the work in your office
You have to understand that there is nothing like a very routine work that does not require any planning. The belief that it will go on by itself is wrong. Even tasks that ca be done on an everyday basis can be improved if there is good planning involved.
Everywhere there is scope for improvement, better methods that are yet to be implemented and problems that have to be solved. And for all this you need proper planning. Lets take a look at the different steps involved in planning for a week.
The best way to plan the work for a week is to maintain a planning sheet. Now, please remember that this is apart from the routine work that is done in the office.
The following steps will help you to make a planning sheet.
1. Take a fairly big sheet of paper and divide it into the number of working days in your office.
2. The column for each day should further be divided in to the morning and afternoon sessions.
3. Divide the job to be done ad assign each part to a concerned person.
4. Decide on which part of the task is to be done on each day and at which part of the day.
5. Put a cross mark followed by the concerned persons initials on that section of the day on which you propose to do the decided part of the job.
6. At the end of the day, if the job is done put a circle round the cross.
7. If the job is not done, carry over the cross and add it to the next days cross.
In this way, at the end of the week, you can find out how much of the work was done each day and subsequent plans can be made for the following weeks.In this way you can plan for a week or a month, depending on your requirement.
While you are drafting your plan and estimating your expenses, you must never forget the fact that time means money. But your plan should be realistic as well. In order to finish the task at the earliest possible date, there is no sense in chalking out a schedule which would mean that you will have to break your back in order to meet the deadline. And that is about planning.
To have freedom of time, (and other kinds of freedom as well), you need to be organized. It's one of the many paradoxes of life.
People often think that the processes of getting and being organized take away from their available time, and it's true - as far as it goes. There is a commitment of time involved in bringing order out of chaos and then maintaining order.
Unless you're already perfectly satisfied with the organizational state of your office or home, it will take some effort to bring things to the point where being organized is clearly saving you time, energy, and money.
The question is whether the effort is worth it to you.
Another way to frame the question is to ask what is the price you're paying for being disorganized. Does it cause conflicts in your relationships - business or personal? Do you have a pattern of being unable to quickly locate things you need, resulting in daily doses of irritation and stress?
Disorganization certainly wastes time and energy. It also costs money.
Sometimes the cost is indirect: missed opportunity from not having your act together. But there is also the direct cost of having to replace things that have permanently gone missing in the midst of chaos.
On the other hand, being organized allows you to find what you want when you want it.
The payoff of being organized goes beyond merely saving time, energy, and money. Organization also results in better relationships. An orderly environment helps reduce conflicts among household members. At work, the image you present by being organized advances the respect that colleagues and clients hold for you.
Organization also increases the likelihood of success in achieving your goals. A productive environment is a setting in which everything around you supports your goals and who you want to be. It is an intentional environment.
If you've decided to get organized, make a commitment, a specific plan with a deadline and some accountability. Start small, but start somewhere because organization is a process, not a destination.
Step by step, you can bring your home or office to the point where it supports your life, as your environment should do.
1. Identify something to organize. A suggestion of where to begin is to eliminate clutter in a specific area: a drawer, a closet, a room.
2. Give yourself a deadline by which you will have it done. Make the deadline feasible - the point here is to achieve success, no matter how large or small the initial project is.
3. Build in some accountability or consequences: what are the positive consequences of getting it done on time (reward yourself in celebration); or the negative consequences of missing your deadline.
Once you've accomplished your first objective, then build on success. Choose your next small but specific area, and so on until you're satisfied.
Organization is a practice, not a natural tendency as so many people believe. It's true that there are those who enjoy the process of putting things in order more than others do, but anyone who chooses to be organized can be.
We've all felt this way: There's always someone else who seems completely in control and seems to manage every aspect of life with such skill. You ask yourself "Why can't I be like that?" There were days when I would find myself late at night and have absolutely no idea what I had done that day. Everything just seemed like a blur and I went to bed feeling as though I had accomplished nothing. The very concept of time management just seems like another thing you don't have time for, right? Why buy another day planner to gather dust on a table or a PDA that has no calendar entries and an endless to do list?
Inside your head you just keep screaming "no more," but what is the alternative? How can any of us really take control and feel some sanity and sense of accomplishment in this information driven world? Understanding how to manage your time is essential in all business relations, school, home, and everyday life. Having the right tools can make it easy in time management, but having the right sense of empowerment and personal direction is critical in order to create a balance in all of the aspects of life which we must be able to manage in order to live a happy, productive and meaningful life.
You have the same 24 hours in the day as everyone else. It's your time. It doesn't belong to someone else so take possession of it now. When we talk about time management, we're not really managing time. We're managing ourselves. It's not just about learning when to say no. It's about learning how to say yes to the things that are important to you and give them the priority they deserve. Instead of scrambling to prioritize your schedule, you need to seize a new paradigm and schedule your priorities. Not every bit of information in this book is going to fix the exact needs of how you have chosen to live your life, but by adding context and some approaches to the way you manage your time you will find that you have enough hours in the day. You will find the success that you deserve and the sense of well being and peace of mind will be your biggest reward.
Time management is about self-mastery. The wind of time blows the same on us all. It's how we accept that wind and allow ourselves to be moved by it that makes the difference between those who sail past all others and those who are dead in the water. Developing skills in time management is like learning how to set the sail of life in a way that creates the outcome you want, and by doing so you'll always find the shores you seek.
We live in a busy society. We may have demanding jobs, children, families and many other "important" things that hoover up all of our time, and before we know it, Christmas is looming once more and we're muttering about another year just passing us by.
How many times do you say, "I'll read that book later when I have more time" or "I'll finish listening to that audio program when I have more time" or something very similar?
You may want to create the life of your dreams, but it just seems so very difficult with so many other things that just have to be dealt with. You may not have the time to spend an hour a day meditating and an hour a day working on your personal development and an hour a day working on your business. In fact, for some of us, we're lucky if we can even find time to sleep!
However, the key is not the spend time "doing" personal development work, but to just do it!
This means live it; make it a part of your life; something that you do every moment of every day in everything that you do with everyone that you meet.
You can sit on the bus or train to work, close your eyes and work on releasing emotional blocks. You can become aware of what people are reflecting back to you about yourself in your conversations and interactions. Being aware of your problems brings you much closer to changing them.
You may want to find more time to listen to audio programs or some of my hypnosis CD's. My hypnosis CD's you can put on when you go to bed to listen to. You don't need to use headphones to listen to them, nor do you have to be awake. The subliminal versions can be listened to anytime, even when you are working and doing other things; so you can still get the benefit of the programs.
For spoken word programs, what about listening to them on your commute to work? Or if you spend your evening sat in front of the television, turn it off and put one of these programs on instead.
Look at how you are using your time. How much of what you are doing is constructive and something you absolutely must do right now? Are there times you are not doing constructive things? Could you combine activities, for example, watch the television whilst doing something else working towards your future?
Everyone promotes their own time management system. Have a look at a few of them, try them and find something that works for you. This could even be a combination of different systems. It doesn't matter so long as it saves you times, keeps your organised and helps you to get things done.
At the end of the day, you need to decide what is most important in your life.
Is it more important to do the ironing right now and make sure you don't miss the latest episode of your soap opera?
Or is it more important to sit down and spend some time planning and working towards creating the life of your dreams?
Working on changing your life can appear to be very daunting, particularly if you are not in the best of places to start with. You look at everything that you want to change and want to deal with and wonder where on earth you are going to start.
In these cases it is best to "chunk" down the tasks and the goals you have in mind. This means break the big goal into smaller chunks, or take baby steps. Take it one step at a time, and before you know it, you will be where you want to be.
How many people get to their old age and say, "I wish I had spent more time at work" or ironing, or watching soap operas, or ...
So what can you do to find more time
Look at what activities you are engaged in and decide which you can cut out for the sake of creating the future of your dreams Combine some activities so you are doing more than one thing at a time
Focus on what is important to you. Is half hour in front of a soap opera more important than a half hour working towards your future?
Prioritise creating the life of your dreams
Right now, stop saying, "I'll start tomorrow" or "I'll sort that out when I have time" or "I'll deal with that later". It's never going to happen; never going to work. Just do it and make it happen right now.
The perfect situation for change will never happen. You will always find distractions, excuses and reasons not to make the changes or take the action. You can spend many miserable years waiting for that perfect situation and you know what? There's never going to be a perfect situation, only the now.
As the advert for the trainers say, "Just do it". That's what you need to do too. Stop planning, putting off and thinking you'll do something when you have more time. Just do it today
"We are all born with the same amount of time. Nobody will ever get any more than 24 hours in a day; nobody will get more than 365 days in a year. It's your choice whether you will use this time to create an amazing life or fritter it away uselessly. It is this choice that makes the achievers stand head and shoulders above everyone else. What's your choice? Jason E. Johns
"Plan your work for today and every day, then work your plan" Margaret Thatcher
"Look to this day ... for yesterday is but a dream, and tomorrow is only a vision. But today well-lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope." Sanskrit
You've got goals haven't you? Things you want to achieve in life? The thing I would guess you are lacking is the time to do it. I mean, you've got a job, then your social commitments, then your hobbies, sports, TV time and ... oh yes ... you have to sleep too.
And after all this, what time is there left to work on your goals and making your life outstanding?
Very little.
And I bet you would like more time, wouldn't you?
Everyone has twenty four hours in a day, whether you are Bill Gates or a homeless guy on the streets. Everyone has exactly the same amount of time. It's what you do with it that determines whether you sleep in a $42million mansion or under yesterday's newspapers.
So how can you get some more time to work on your success and that dream life?
Well, there are lots of ways you can get more time.
How much time do you spend in front of the TV each day? The average is about 3 hours. What if you cut that back by an hour a day?
How about instead of lying in bed for that extra half hour romancing your snooze button you got up straight away?
What if you used your lunch break to read and research what you needed to know in order to achieve your goals?
How long is your commute to work? The average is about an hour, so what if this time was used to learn, think and plan?
You probably use a computer too, and answer email or write letters. What if you learnt to type faster and so make your computer time more productive?
Let's take a hypothetical example here. From doing the above you get an hour from reducing your TV, half an hour from getting up earlier, half an hour for lunch, and an hour commuting time. Plus, let's say you learn to type and so save half an hour a day on the computer because you can type faster.
That means you get three and a half hours extra a day to work on your success - free!
Now, you'd better sit down for a moment here because this may surprise you. This three and half hours a day equates to an extra fifty three days a year for you to work on your success.
So you would get fifty three days free just by making this small sacrifice! Not bad is it?
Imagine what you could do with those extra days? It's almost two more months in the year! I am sure you could create your dream life in that extra time, don't you?
What is successful time management? This is all individual, but it always involves these elements:
Good organization and structure, clearly defined and prioritized action plan, and finally some kind of satisfaction or enjoyment from the task.
Here are 10 tips to help you achieve all of this:
Tip 1. The secret to successful time management is closely related to the clarity of the goals you have set. Learning these basic secrets will surely benefit you so you can do all the things that you want to accomplish in a day and in a year. You need to be extrememly clear in your mind as to what you try to achieve.
Tip 2. Make sure that your goals are achievable. Some people set unachievable or over-ambitious goals, which can seriously mess up schedules and interim goals. It is vital that you set your goals correctly.
Tip 3. Asking the correct questions to yourself can help you determine your achievable goals. Learn to be honest in your answers to accomplish realistic goals. Asking questions is one of the basic elements in successful time management. Asking yourself is a therapeutic technique to help you find unanswered questions.
Tip 4. You need to have an action plan. Managing your time means putting in some serious action - using your skills and intelligence in achieving it. A clearly defined action plan is one vital step in organizing your time. The action plan should include a lists of your goals and your specific actions towards each goal - along with detailed responsibilities allocated to each step of the plan.
Tip 5. Time to get organized - and start with your PC. If you are storing files on your computer, make sure to have a tracking sheet on what you are saving and what are the files that are not needed or that needs to be updated. Much time is wasted searching for nuggets of gold on your PC among hundreds of unneccessary documents.
Tip 6. Learn to prioritize things. Write all the things that you need to accomplish in a day. Once you have the list, mark the most important things. If you have a long project, you need to break them into small projects where you can squeeze some on your daily activity. Remember to use the rule of important activities first. This is not a new rule of the thumb, but it is proven to be very effective.
Tip 7. Once you have categorized all the things that you need to do in a day, you need to put the amount of time you will spend on each daily task and activity. This is very important, so you need to put the exact and realistic amount of time where you can accomplish each activity within your day. Never waste time.
Tip 8. Don't overwork you time management and get caught in "paralysis by analysis". There are people who spend the whole day figuring out and making list of the things that they should do in a day. Bottom line, at the end of the day, they have a beautiful list but no real accomplishments.
Tip 9. Keep in mind that you are making a realistic goal to achieve your purpose. Remember that every plan have flaws. When you plan for your goal, you need to have actions. You need to plot your plan; you ask questions, are part of the plan and focus more on the results. This way you will be achieving your goal in no time. Once you have reached your goal, you will realize that you have achieved your goal and stick with your plan as predicted in a very effortless manner.
Tip 10. Find enjoyment in what you are doing. Even if the task is not that fun, try to find some nugget of learning - or focus on the bits you do enjoy. Procrastination usually happens when we are bored - so try to add some enjoyment into your tasks. If the task really isn't inspiring, add enjoyment by allowing yourself to celebrate once the most boring tasks are completed. Just add 5 minutes of something you really enjoy as a celebration, before hitting on the next boring task.
So now you know how to manage you time. Time to go back to work!
