How are you at managing time? If you are the kind of person who ends up missing deadlines all the time or who needs to spend extra hours working to get back on track, when others have gone home, take solace in the fact that you are not alone. Time management is equally one of the most rewarding and practical, but difficult skills you need to master to have real success in life.
As well as helping you in your career, good time management skills will also help you to have a better balance between your work life and home life.
Given how important it is, we have put together a list of powerful tips that are easy to follow and incorporate into your everyday life.
Get Enough Sleep
If you believe yourself to be something of a night owl, you may have guessed the subject of sleep would come up because it always seems to come up. Do you know why, though? Because it has been scientifically proven that all adult humans need a specific amount of sleep to be healthy. On average, this should be about 7 to 8 hours.
Don’t try to avoid it, thinking that you need to more awake time to achieve your goals. You are going to be better able to meet your deadlines and achieve those goals if you get that minimum amount of sleep in. Your mind and body will be able to function efficiently and you won’t procrastinate as much.
Learn How to Use the Powerful Word “No”
This is another thing you may find a little difficult and it may put you out of your comfort zone and go against your long-held beliefs, but you need to get confident using the word no. It is almost an art form, saying no and not being rude. You must learn that artform, though, as it will help you to establish boundaries and avoid overloading yourself.
When you are in the habit of just saying yes to everything, you will end up making life harder for you than it needs to be. To avoid burning out, you need to assess what you can and can’t do and be upfront with people when they are asking you.
Define Your Purpose
You may have lots of goals. While some of them are likely your own, others will be those that you have taken on for others. Regardless of what goals you have, it is important to have a purpose. Perhaps the most effective way of managing your time is by having a focus on the end. The clearer your purpose is, the better and more fulfilling your life will be.
Concentrate Your Energy on the Activities that have the Highest Value
One great way to determine how best you should spend your time during a specific period is to look at your goals for that period, for example, a week. It’s quite possible that not all your goals will be those you consider high value. Therefore, at the start of the week make sure the five activities you pick have the highest value. Concentrate on fewer low-value activities and you will be able to become more productive and have better time management skills.
Figure Out Where Your Time is Being Wasted
It is quite common nowadays for many of us to engage in pointless things that do nothing but eat at our time and cause us frustration. It could be that you are wasting time and you don’t even realise it. We’re talking about activities like aimless texting, email reading, web browsing, making personal phone calls.
If you feel you may be wasting time, you could use time tracking software to keep a record of everything you do. Be honest with yourself and establish what your time is actually spent on and what you should be spending it on.
Fight Against Procrastination
The biggest enemy of time management is procrastination because it distracts and diverts our attention from our goals and high-value activities. Therefore, if you want to get a handle on managing your time effectively, you need to fight against procrastination. Rather than waiting to do things, do them immediately or at the first convenient and don’t leave activities, especially high-value activities on the back burner or for another day, because that day will probably never come.
Don’t Multitask
One of the biggest misconceptions that many people have is that men are not good at multitasking, whereas women are. This is inaccurate as human beings are not designed to multitask. Our brains are designed to concentrate fully on one activity at a time. That is why, when you start piling up and trying to juggle a variety of tasks simultaneously, it almost always ends in disaster.
Follow a Balanced, Healthy Diet
Following on nicely from the above, the other tip you probably suspected was going to show up in this post is all about your diet. Eating has a big impact on your productivity and the ability to concentrate on meeting your goals. That impact can be negative or positive and it all comes down to making the right or wrong choices.
When you eat a lot of snacky food and unhealthy, fatty, high sugar food, you are setting yourself up for problems. You may feel an initial burst of energy and drive, but soon, that wears off and you are left with that sluggish feeling we all know.
Try to devise a healthy, balanced diet that consists of lots of brain foods like nuts, leafy greens, green tea, avocado, blueberries and make sure you stay hydrated by drinking lots of water. Try to have three meals a day, at the same time every day, as having a schedule for everything in life will also help you stay focused.
It can be hard changing the way you do things, at first. However, if you are determined to get better at managing your time and becoming the success you’ve always wanted to be in life, you need to put the hard work in and following the above tips is a sure-fire to do it.