Managing your time, requires a little bit of know how and a bit of discipline. This should give you a few tips on how to get your act together.Trust me I know all the ways of not having your act together.
You start off the day with a To Do list. You have identified the most important task for you to do on your list. You have to insure your car and book an appointment with the garage to have it checked out.
You know these are the most important things that you have to get done, yet you go online for a few minutes, you check Facebook, Twitter email, Oh there are a few urgent things that need doing in email so you reply to them, you check the news, God there is some horrific stuff happening in the world. You check Facebook, God those cat pics are cute, that’s a really funny video that someone posted, what that article looks good you better read it. Oh there’s a Twitter link on that, I wonder who wrote it, better check Twitter, email, Facebook,,, news, and so it goes.
The morning has passed and you haven’t gotten any insurance quotes or rang the garage. Take a tea break. Phone rings, half an hour chat, do some house work. Go to the supermarket, come home, and check email and so on, Lots of unnecessary tasks get done.
So here are a few techniques to help you out.
Have a TO DO list, on your phone in Reminders or use an app like.Any Do
Remember that on our To Do list we all have a frog that we have to eat.
What is “Eating the Frog”, it’s identifying the one horrible thing that you have to do, Don’t allow yourself any privileges (coffee breaks, surfing the net) until you have eaten your frog, i.e. taken that horrible task off your list.
Remember the PARETO PRINCIPLE.
This is the 80/20 rule which means that we can break up lots of statistics into those ratios. That means that 80 % of the world’s wealth is owned by 20% of the people. 80% of the clothes in our wardrobe we wear 20% of the time. When we have tasks to do we spend 80% of our time talking about doing them when we could manage them in 20% of our time?
So less talking about doing stuff and more doing. Once you eat your frog in 20 per cent of the time you have a lot more free time, head space and a feeling of achievement and well-being. Then you feel more energized and motivated and you actually feel like doing more stuff.
Another tip that I have found particularly useful is to set a reminder on your phone. When it beeps have a message show up that asks you
“Am I being productive or just active”?
I have set a target for myself to write this. I have a found a million other things to do other than to sit down writing. I have cleaned out my utility room, I’ve done easier tasks (that were not urgent or on my To Do list). However when I do finish a blog post, I have such a sense of achievement and back patting and self-congratulatory chats that it really is worth just sitting down and doing it.
Take a task you have to do that you are dreading. You will be surprised that the hardest bit is actually just getting started. If you are finding it difficult just decide that you will just do it for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes you will be surprised how much you can get done in that length of time that you will continue on.
This morning I decided to do 1 hour of house work before I turned on my computer. Just to give myself the environment in which to work in. I thought I had tons to do but after 15 minutes cleaning up the kitchen and tidying the living room I realised that the huge job I thought that I had to do was not really all that big after all and the getting started was the hard bit.
Group tasks together.
If you have phone calls to make, do them all at a time for making phone calls time.
If you have shopping to do, Do one big shop and don’t spend endless trips to the shops for things you could have bought in the first place. Do online shopping when there is a danger that you have a deadline to meet and you are likely to waste a few hours going to the supermarket and buying unnecessary purchases. Do not go to the supermarket when you are hungry and do not buy things because they are on sale if you had not intended to purchase them before you went to the shop.
Now go do something useful and tweeet me after and tell me about it @ailieirv