Do you also feel that 24 hours are seemingly less?
You have so much to do but the day ends in a blink?
We all are given 24 hours in a day and everyone is balancing the same number of hours so why does it feel less to a bunch of us?
It happens because of a mismanagement of time. You can’t welcome success if you can’t manage your available hours. There is no special clock that successful people have. They just know how to speed with the ticking.
So, how do we really manage time?
In reality, we don’t manage time, we just manage ourselves according to the time.
Here are some steps that can help you with Time Management-
Audit your time-
Understand the schedule of your time spent on multiple tasks. The regular flow of your work and duration you have been investing or wasting on things, people, work and personal time.
This will give you a fair idea of what your next updated schedule needs to be and how you need to distribute your time in a better manner. Don’t rush for this process. This might take time for the first time but this will help you greatly for the remaining processes.
Eliminate time-wasting habits-
When you would have audited your daily schedule, you must have come across time wasting or unproductive habits and activities that are just taking away your hours that you must have invested into something productive and useful. While you have analyzed such activities, kick them away from your day’s schedule. It may not always mean complete elimination but also cutting away time from multiple daily tasks or personal time.
Make to-do lists-
Once you’ve done auditing your time you know where your hours are going. So now you can make a to-do list on a daily basis so that you can analyze your day in advance and manage your time in a better way avoiding wasting unnecessary hours on wasteful unproductive things. Don’t spend all your time making your scheduler. Otherwise having to make a to-do list will also be added in the tasks.
Spend your mornings-
Mark Twain once said, “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”
His point was to focus on the biggest tasks in the morning followed by other trivial tasks. If you do the giant block as the first thing in the morning, you’ll be de-stressed for the rest of the day and your day will feel bigger. Finishing those will give you the biggest momentum to help you sail through the rest of the day.
Follow the 80-20 rule-
If you are someone in sales and marketing, you must have heard this principle before. This rule states that 80% of the efforts come from 20 percent of the results. 80 percent of the sales comes from 20 percent of the loyal customers. It is also known as the Pareto principle. The trick? Identify the 20 percent of the efforts that are producing 80 percent of the results and scale that out. You can do this with careful and conscious tracking and analysis and you have the best time management technique in hand.
Take frequent breaks-
Time management and organizing tasks doesn’t mean that you have to be a robot. Even a machine needs time to recharge for the next operation, similarly we as humans also need rest and relaxation to remain active. Keep your mental, emotional and physical states at peak levels by taking breaks frequently. It will also help you maintain a work-life balance. Now when we all are inclining towards the virtual world, it is important to take care of regular mind refreshments to avoid monotony and mental exhaustion.
Practice meditation and yoga
Meditating, yoga and exercising every morning gives you a mental balance and undoubtedly a better physical health. You will feel a new and fresh oxygen flowing down your lungs and all the toxic unhealthy air is releasing your mind and body. With a better mental balance you will be less distracted during work and experience better concentration that will in a way help you to manage time effectively without wasting any precious hours.
Try these steps for atleast a week and analyze again the entire process and understand what you need to revise. Time management might seem difficult when you’ve just started but after some days when you’ll see the amazing results, you’ll realize how much time you’ve been wasting all this while when you couldn’t manage time.
