How to better manage your time

How many times have you said to yourself, “I just don’t have enough time!”? Often it is much less a matter of not having time and more a question of not using the time you have to your advantage.

Something that has been very useful in my time management recently has been the idea that we all only have a limited amount of time left to use. Some people are able to manage their time effectively while others can’t find the motivation to spend it correctly. For me, it took the realization that time is precious and we only have so much of it to use. This led me to start using what is called a 90-Year life calendar. The site Wait but Why explains this concept in detail if you want to know more. Essentially, the idea behind the life calendar is to track how much time you have left to use by seeing how much you have spent. Each dot on the calendar represents a month in your life. As each month goes by you are to mark it and reflect on what happened during that month. Did you do everything you set out to do? Did you start that side business you said you would? Are you happy with how your time was spent?

Months1

This practice will provide an accounting of how you are spending your time. And when you become accountable to yourself you will begin to value your resources better and more carefully. So how can you be more productive? Here are some ways to make the most of the time that we have:

Aim To Meet Deadlines
Deadlines cause stress and the less time we feel like we have to meet those deadlines the more stress we feel. The solution is of course, to manage our time better so instead of meeting deadlines with stress we’re meeting them with a completed project.

Plan Your Tasks
If you are aiming to manage your time, which you should be, then you need to prioritize it. Do what is most pressing, first and leave the other things for after. If you have ten things to do, you might want to just jump directly to the one you’re most interested in doing. No matter how you feel about your to-do list, prioritize it and always attend to the top priority first, and work your way through the to-do list. By completing tasks in this way, feeling balanced rather than stressed out, you’ll have a better attitude about everything on your list. By scheduling for efficiency you will increase efficiency and decrease stress.

Allow For Productive Moments
You can think of your productivity as the relationship between what you have to do and what you actually accomplish. Increase your productivity by setting yourself up for moments of focus. When you really need to concentrate, shut everything else off. Turn your phone to airplane mode, turn the Internet off, or shut your door. Give yourself blocks of uninterrupted time and allow yourself to have these moments of extreme focus.

The Outcome
By rearranging a few things and changing your attitude towards time management, you can get everything done with less stress. Implementing these types of time management techniques can be hard at first, but if you are persistent you will start to feel more in control of your life and the schedule it follows. So be sure to put some time into managing your time.

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