My Essay Blog

If you are like me, you’ve often wished there were 48 hours in a day instead of just 24. There never seems to be enough time to get everything done that you want. Since we just have about 16 hours a day not counting sleep time, it’s important how we use the time we have.

On the average, people waste about 2 hours a day. This is mainly from poor planning. If a person is unorganized, they waste time trying to find things, they miss appointments, they only do one thing at a time when they could be doing two.

Good time management is a major building block to success. Oftentimes, it’s not how much time we spend working but how efficiently we do the work. The key to successful time management is careful planning and setting priorities.Plan your day, your week, and your month in advance. Know when things need to be done. A great way to “buy time” is to multi-task. Do more than one thing at a time. There are many things that do not require concentrated mental effort. These are more easily combined.

“Failing to plan is planning to fail,”

-unknown

Even though I am a big pro football fan, I can’t justify sitting down and spending three hours watching a game. I have to be doing other things while I do it. Thank goodness for instant replay! I’ve found this is a good time to spend icing injuries or some other busy work. I can also record the games and watch them while exercising. I exercise about 30 minutes a day so during the football season I can watch a game during the week without wasting any time doing it.

When you run errands try to do as many as you can on one trip. If you are self-employed, you can combine personal errands that are on the way to a business errand and have the mileage written off as a business expense.

I’ve been fortunate to have been able to work at home for the past ten years. It’s been great because I hate to waste time commuting. If you must commute, you can use the time to listen to audio self-improvement tapes, audio books or anything educational.

If you are a regular exerciser and belong to a gym, think about working out at home. If you lack the space and money for exercise equipment, try traditional body weight exercises. A little research on the Internet can show you websites devoted to this subject. Even though I lifted weights for 20 years, I’ve converted to body weight exercises. I’ve found they feel better and get the same if not better results. Of course, if you go to the gym to socialize or network, that’s okay. You’re doing more than one thing at a time. You can go walking with your wife. That way you’re getting exercise and husband / wife interaction at the same time.

Setting priorities enables you to get the most important things done. Keep you eye on the big picture. Don’t let low priority things bump off the higher priority tasks from your schedule. If you’ve only got so much time, it’s imperative you spend your time doing the things that bring you the most benefit.

“Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.”

&ndash Goethe

Time is so precious. If you want to be successful in life you need to be spending more time being productive and doing things that are moving you forward. Spending hours a day watching TV, playing computer games, or surfing the Internet is not productive time usage. We all need downtime but you need to determine how much is really necessary. If you use your productive time efficiently then you will have more time to relax and do the fun things.

Time management is a way for people to design as well as activate their time with maximum efficiency. When you become more proficient with time management, you will be able to accomplish daily tasks with ease and you will feel better about yourself. Time management static noise and trouble normatively arise not only considering you have too much to do, but rather, resulting from the way you manage your time. The modern life offers a lot of distractions out there that make possible you to divert your attention to odds and ends that are more fun to do.

You can find many advantages to managing your own time. You can actually gain time, lower avoidance, eliminate cramming as well as reduce your anxiety. So as to manage your time successfully, having an awareness of what your goals are will assist you when it plays a part in prioritizing your activities.

The central thing about it is that there are steps that can be taken to organize your life and handle it more effectively. You can kick off by creating a schedule or a task list. Be sure to include deadlines that the tasks must be completed by. Be sure to accurately allot enough time for each job or incident. You will need to consider as well as invite things such as driving time, set, breaks etc.

When faced with burdensome tasks and challenges you should try as well as make sure you make those once you are greatest alert. If you will improve and upgrade your attention as well as alertness levels, you are able to focus your attention more expressly, therefore making it easier to accomplish the operation.

You should think about creating time that is exclusively your own. Formulate the alarm, so that you get up a half an hour earlier or go to bed a half-hour later than ordinary. Involve when you are thinking about your schedule alone time with your spouse or friends.

Prioritize what you need to accomplish during the day. Focus your attention on the operation or events with the superior rewards. If you see odds and ends getting done, you will feel better about yourself, leaving you to do more.

Taking on more than you have time for can put a principal damper on your time management as well as leave you feeling drained. You should put a lot of effort in learning how to refuse and saying “no”. If you know that you do not have the extra time, do not volunteer for an additional committee. Sometimes, throughout your life, you will need to turn down invitations to events that you do not have enough time to attend.

It is a know fact that we all suffer from procrastination. If you are able to overcome procrastination, managing your time will turn into much easier. The entier team of people is familiar with the lifelong saying, “don’t put off till tomorrow, what we can do in these days”.

Although it is easy to get into a rut as well as slack off from daily tasks, there is hope. You can manage your time as well as accomplish the things you want, with little effort. Just be sure to follow the simple steps to time management as well as remember to take it one day at a time.

Time management is the most important asset one can have these days, with the collapse of traditional values any person can find himself running a few, parallel different lives all at once. I am sure you are not a stranger to this situation, you have too much you need to do, you do not have the time, and you see all your leisure time fade away as you calculate how will you manage to do all these things you must.

Not only do most people know this situation, most people know about time management, but fail to understand it correctly and most importantly, fail to comprehend the basic concepts of time management and implement them in their very busy lives.

Time management is not about doing too many things in less time but doing right things at right time in right way. How you manage your time is part of your personal agenda. However, there are a few generic steps that help you manage your time in a better way, more so in case of executives and ever-occupied corporate.

It take the average adult about 5 years until he or she understands that they had enough of stress and trouble over not getting the work done on time, the laundry on time and all those family activities they have been wishing to do for so long &ndash ever. Time management is the answer to most of these problems and almost anyone can find a way to have a little more time to do more things and enjoy life a whole lot more.

The first step towards effective time management, and a regular time management routine is to set clear goals and targets, keeping your mind on the target and goal will assist you in getting where you want . Goal setting makes you more focused and sets a direction for how the tasks should proceed. The goals should be clear, concise, unambiguous. Try and evaluate, realistically, how much time you got and what you want to achieve and than set a plan of getting it.

This planning will allow you to “see” time and plan how to use it, you will know how much time you want to allocate to any task and you will also have the ability to keep an eye on your advancement as you go along, taking more time if needed or delaying the goal when realizing it will take more time.

Prioritizing is the most important thing in time management, you need to understand how to create an importance level and assign it to all the things in your life, your time management will be as successful and as clear as the priority you set in your life. Important point to be remembered here is that prioritizing does not mean doing only what is important and leaving out on rest, rather it is doing what is important first and then proceeding with the rest.

Scheduling and Routine Setting: Scheduling binds your prioritized tasks and goals in a time frame such that you get a productive outcome of your available time. A carefully made schedule motivates you to complete your tasks on time and cuts down on the time bandits by limiting the amount of time you spend on a particular task.

These steps outline the basics of effective time management.

Time management is the meticulous way of performing the tasks in the available number of hours. It has become a necessity in today’s fast-paced life, as a person ends up performing many roles. One has to be committed to fulfill all the responsibilities with 100% perfection. While doing so, people find themselves perplexed as to how to approach and manage all the things and still enjoy ample leisure hours.

Time management has become the gravest necessity. It basically aims as how the available hours are made use of in such away that all is done correctly as per the need of the hour.

Adopting the Skills in Our Lives

Time management involves a lot of planning and organizing. One has to sit down and chalk out the plan. The most vital factor is bridging the gap between expected and achieved. There are certain steps that help us to manage time perfectly:

• Target: The first and the foremost step is to fix a target in terms of what has to be achieved and in how much time. This could provide an outline, on the basis of which further planning would be undertaken.

• Planning: After ascertaining the needs and the hours, it is the time to attain a perfect balance between the two. Time is allocated to each task to be performed so that the goal is achieved. However, flexibility has to be exercised, as the actual time taken could be different from planned.

• Setting Priorities: Another important aspect is arranging the tasks to be performed in the descending order of priority. When one understands the significance of each event, managing the time becomes easy.

• Time Schedule: Preparing a timetable helps to complete the work on time and meet the goal effectively.

Time management as a whole aims at avoiding wastage of time and proper utilization. The business community also adheres to techniques like resource planning for managing resource. A number of software are used for time management.

In a nutshell, the time normally wasted can be can be put to effective use by making most of time management.

I am applying the first of these time management tips right now. You see, there was a time when I tended to do all the “busy work” in the morning, while putting off the important things. I might have gotten to the important stuff later in the afternoon, or maybe not. Now, I get up and I write an article, because this is what is most important for my business right now. I do it whether I feel like it or not.

The result is that I often fell like I have gotten a good days work in before noon. I fact, I find that the business does well even if I take afternoons off so my wife and I can go for a drive in the mountains - as long as I do the important things first. There also doesn’t seem to be nearly as much “busy work” that needs to be done once the important things are out of the way.

Spend some time to decide which things on your “to do” list are most important. If they are longer projects, break them into smaller pieces, and attack one of those smaller pieces as your first work of the day every day. Important things first - not a new idea, but still a valuable time management tip.

Time Management Tip - Planning

Spend just the right amount of time planning. This is a tough one. How do you know if you are spending too much time planning, and so wasting time? How do you know if you are not doing enough planning, and so working inefficiently? I have a partial solution to this problem.

First of all, most of us fall into one of two categories. There are those of us, like myself, that like to plan. I can spend the day making lists, looking at calendars, and dreaming up new strategies to try in the business. Then there are those who don’t like to plan. They are always forgetting to do things that should be on their “to do” lists, because they don’t have such a list.

Both types have their time management problems, but here is my simple solution: If you are of the first type, assume you are spending too much time planning, and start working more directly. If you are of the second type, you almost certainly can be more productive in less time if you plan more. Sit down in the evening and make a plan for tomorrow.

Time Management Tip - Get Up Early

As one who didn’t use to get up early, I can tell you that I am amazed at the difference it makes. It may seem that if you sleep the same number of hours, it shouldn’t matter when you sleep. It does matter (at least it has for me). Is it the quietness of the morning that allows for more and better work? Is it that there are more and more distractions as the day progresses?

I don’t know. I just know that now that I get up early, there seems to be so much time to do things. If you aren’t an early riser, why not try it for a week or two? Try the other two time management tips above as well. Time managed well means more time for whatever you want to do. In my case, since this is my second article of the day, I think it’s time for a drive in the mountains.

Over the years, I’ve tried it all, different ways to get organized, with much trial and error. Some worked, some didn’t. I tried some of those fancy looking matching desk sets. They looked beautiful and for some, I’m sure they are perfect. But for me, they took up too much valuable space. Space I needed to proof my work, keep my reference books, or keep those essentials that I use on a regular basis. For me, when I work I want everything within an arms reach. I want to have immediate access to the tools I need to complete my assignments.

I have a corner desk, and on it I have my computer, printer, fax, phone, etc. Beside my desk I have a two-drawer filing cabinet. This was possibly the greatest thing I’ve ever done to organize my business. In it I have my files and supplies that I use on a regular basis, such as, client stationery, client files, a file for my receipts, all personal correspondence, paper, folders, etc. Whenever these files get bulky with client documents, I simply empty them into the main filing cabinet. For example, my main clients, whom I’ve been working with for 20 years, their files in the main cabinet are quite large. It’s nice to have the smaller file close by with just their recent correspondence. Plus, when I need a folder, an order slip for my books, a copy of my stationery, it’s all right there. AAAHHH, now that’s convenience.

Now for the receipts’ file. I keep it monthly. At the beginning of the month, I simply replace the file with the new month’s file. That way, at tax time, I don’t have to go through a whole year’s receipts and divide it up. It’s already separated.

Here are some other organizational tips you might find beneficial:

Mail&ndashWe have a round basket by a small table by the front door. All incoming mail goes in there first. Then when I have the opportunity to sort through it, I get it and put it in its appropriate place. Always pitch anything you aren’t keeping. All business-related mail is sorted and put away immediately. Anything that might need work done on it is logged into my Daytimer and then put in the To Do Bin.

Desk&ndashYour desk should have on it only those items that you use on a regular basis. Look around. What haven’t you used in the last month or two? Start dumping. Find another spot for it. But find the RIGHT spot for it.

No Piling of Anything Allowed. This is one of those habits that can be so easy to get into. Definitely one that I catch myself doing a lot! But I stop myself now because I know it will just be brushed off to the side and forgotten. Too often I miss something important and regret the piling blunder again. You will be amazed how much more organized you will feel if you just don’t do this one thing. And time yourself. You think you are too busy, but it takes seconds and how long does it take to look for that missing document.

Daytimer&ndashNow this isn’t only for Time Management. Your Daytimer can have a space for all your business cards, appointment cards, etc. How great it is to have all these cards right in the same place. On the date of your appointment, you simply grab the card and off you go. Also, recently I’ve started using the Outlook Express to log in appointments as well. It has a calendar and I can look to it to get a feel for the day and the week to follow.

Three-ring Binders &ndash I saved my best for last. I do a lot of research in doing publicity for clients and also have a lot of e-mails that I need to print and save. I use paper that already has the wholes punched for insertion into a 3 ring binder. I will print out important research, client e-mails I need to save, work that I’ve done so I can review it later, etc., on this paper and then put it into the proper binders. I have a binder for all clients, research, PR, myself, and miscellaneous. You would be amazed how clearer things are in a binder than tossed in a file cabinet. For my business it works tremendously.

Start the beginning of the day and the end of the day with a clean-up. What a tremendous feeling that is. When you are done with a project, away it goes. When you start the next project, out comes all the material you need.

There’s nothing like the feeling of sitting down in the morning to a nice clean organized desk and office. Once you feel this a couple of days, you want to experience this every day so you’ll take the appropriate steps to make it happen.

The application of time management skills has tended, in the past, to be thought of as something that is for business life only. In reality, though, time management is something from which we can all benefit in our personal lives as well, and in the art of marrying our working lives with our home and social lives.

Those benefits show in a number of ways, including health, well being and satisfaction with our lives overall. Manage your time well, and you can feel in control of your life, rather than letting events control you. There is no single “method” of time management, either in business or personal life. However, there are various time management tips and techniques, practices and theories, which it is worth knowing about.

Acquiring time management skills is something we can set about doing in a methodical way. Really, we all practice time management whether we know it or not. It is more a matter of whether we do it well or badly. The following tips are for improving time management skills, building on those that you will naturally have. Even primitive man used time management, it was just a lot simpler in those days. Time had to be allocated for hunting, and that time had to be used to the fullest effect possible to survive.

Here are just a few time management tips:

1. Before learning any techniques to help you manage your time, have a clear idea of what you are setting out to achieve. Give yourself the opportunity to get your life in some sort of order so that you can both enjoy it to the full and succeed to the full. If you just apply time management to areas of your life that do not really matter to you, then you will not be progressing at a personal level.

2. Get your priorities clear in your mind, so that they are a natural part of you. This will need to become a habit to be very effective, and you will need to apply prioritizing over a number of time spans. Your long term success will probably depend on your being able to prioritize what you need to do to achieve that success. However, to use your time well on a particular day, you need to start the day with a clear idea of your priorities. that also applies to the week, the month and the year. Your priorities for the shorter period must always feed positively into the priorities in the next longer period, and so on, so that each time period is mapped out with priorities that lead to your ultimate success.

3. When assessing priorities, be ruthless with parts of your life that are not contributing to your longer term goals. Removing the areas of your life where you are wasting time, will free up more time for you to apply to reaching your goals.

4. Always be sure to build your health and enjoyment into any plans. Time for relaxation and exercise are critical to your long term achievements; always make time for proper meals, and keep to a healthy but enjoyable diet. Time management is not an exercise in being macho with your business life; it is an opportunity to build a balanced life for yourself and your family.

5. Once you have set your priorities for any period, write them down and refer to them from time to time, updating them if necessary. Should you appear to be failing, examine why, and reset and reinforce your goals and priorities. It is too easy to slip back into bad habits that inhibit your progress.

6. Be sure to keep a diary and use it to plan out each day, week, month. There are all sorts of electronic gizmos, online planners, software etc to act as aids to your time management. Personally, I think a good old fashioned diary is just as good, if not better. About 18 months ago I reverted to using a traditional diary to plan my working time. That forces me to get away from the computer, even for a few minutes, and think what my priorities are, and what I need to be reminded about.

If you can become better at time management, you will find your life more satisfying and less stressful, as well as being able to achieve greater things. For millions of people, life just sweeps them along in a torrent of activity, or inactivity, over which they have little or no control. That can be very stressful, unhealthy, inefficient, and demoralising over the long term. There is nothing quite like controlling your own destiny to reduce stress and aid success.

Think you can’t change? Many of us already know that we need to improve our state of well-being in order to extend our lives as we age. Making changes are traditionally difficult, but the good news is that it’s never too late to make changes for the better. The first step is to understand what’s important to you, and then determine the choices and decisions that represent where you want to be. Maybe you want to start a new career, lose weight, stop smoking or start exercising. Whatever the change is, be sure you understand why you want to make the change.

Take a moment to think about a time in your life when you made a successful change or developed a new habit. What was your motivation for the change? What was your attitude at the time? What obstacles or barriers did you have to overcome? Your level of readiness to change will determine how successful you are, and how much time it will take. Once you make the decision to change, you must practice that new behavior one day at a time until it becomes a habit - a lasting change.

What allows some people to change, while others don’t? According to Dr. James Prochaska, developer of the “Stages of Change Model,” people cycle through a very distinct set of stages when making changes in their lives - from not being interested in making any changes, all the way through to maintaining a change after it’s already been made. This is the real challenge for everyone, because resistance is always the initial response to making a change. Sometimes people don’t see the positive side of change until it’s shown to them (or until they are forced to realize it on their own). Change is a choice. It’s something we decide to do. The same goes for wellness - it’s a choice, and once you have decided to change, you’ll feel better.

Embracing the concept of change is a big thing, because interestingly, many people think they don’t have a choice when it comes to change. Why? For some it’s fear, guilt, love, pain, time management or even a court order. What motivates one person may not be the same thing that gets another person to act. Everyone reacts differently to changes weather voluntary or mandatory.

To start making a change, let go of certain assumptions or ways of doing things, to make room for new ideas. Work on this one day at a time until you feel comfortable. This often comes into play when I work with sedentary people to increase their activity level (people who work a lot and don’t have a lot of time to exercise). One of my clients’ complaints was, “I don’t want to take an hour or 30 minutes to walk.” My solution was to suggest several two-minute intervals that would equal 30 minutes throughout the day &ndash just stand up, walk around and visit people throughout the office, for example. The result was successful. He exercised and actually became more sociable as a result! Once he became comfortable with walking, I got him up to 10-minute intervals three times a day. Now he’s walking 30 minutes at one time and enjoying it. This all took place over the course of a few months.

To make a lasting change, you start wherever you are and stretch a tiny bit more each time. If you fall off the wagon, or experience resistance, identify the cause or circumstances&ndash who you were with, where you were, or your emotional state. The key is to get up and get back on the path again. You may go back and forward a few times because making a lasting change is hard. Your level of readiness to change will determine how successful you are, and how much time it will take. But you need to be ready, able and willing to make change happen.

Yola Eve

Business Trainer

VIP Quality Software

Time Management is getting more and more popular day by day. People want to be more successful, proactive and wealthy. It is not new to everyone that there are common time wasters in our lives. Watching TV all evening long, spending too much time on the Internet, having a very long conversation over the phone, and, my favorite one, doing trifles instead of going bed and loosing your precious sleep – these are common time wasters that you already know of. If you eliminate all these things, you will start to practice Time Management. But for me, it is rather

Time management is essential to managers and business people, it is clear that the average manager has to deal with many issues and that this is the world of cutthroat competition. When a businessman or a manager can not outpace a competitor they will always be the slowcoach of the success bandwagon. Time management skills are needed not only to confront and beat competition but also to provide a manager a better schedule and some quality time so she is more focused and relaxed when working, this is why time management skills have to be at its best. A good use of time management will automatically catapult you to the forefront of the rat race. Time management is an important and unavoidable corner of the total management quadrant.

Time management has shifted from the traditional management concepts to a more modern and up to date version of management with the rising consciousness about time management it has easily entered the sphere of total management. So if you lack in time management skills you will always lag behind in the high rising competition. Remember, procrastination is not going to help. Today’s manager does not have a lot of options, to manage time in a perfect way should also be an aspiration since it is clear that not using time optimally will cost a client, a market or a whole business.

Even if you are a big hot guy there are people who would be eyeing your position. They might be doing their best to overthrow you and jump into your chair. You can only keep them at bay if you learn to keep your time in binds. Plan your tasks, organize your work, set priorities and be firm on your goals. Follow your schedule regime but keep it flexible enough for unforeseen demands of time and you’ll see your hard work bring good benefits.

Good Time management ultimately means that you will have higher productivity and in a natural way you will also see a steady grow of your business. Time management can do wonders to your financial health, a wise time manage timetable will create a clear schedule to work by, and will allow you and your partners to perfect your working protocols and working methods. You will never have to lose a contract because you missed out on deadlines.

Time management is more like a general theory that you need to adopt, it does not mean that you have to go for doing everything you can possibly do in the shortest time available, but doing right things at the right time in right way, an orderly and well plan work plan and working methods. So doing things in the right way on its own enhances the quality of your work along with productivity. Both these factors lead to a cost benefit that is unsurpassable.

In the next article we will go in deeper into the way you should implement and practice time management, I hope that this information increased your knowledge of better time management.