Today you’re going to learn how to manage your time better and I really think that if you read these 12 tips you can totally improve your time management skills. I know that because I use these in my life and I am like a wizard at time management.
So let’s just jump right in and get started.
How To Manage Your Time Better:
1. Time management starts the night before, it starts the week before, it starts before you are in the moment.
If you feel a scatterbrained and overwhelmed and like you’re rushing from place to place that is something that you need to fix by planning ahead of time. You don’t get up earlier at 5:00 a.m. or whatever time by just setting your alarm that and expecting you to follow through you have to do the work ahead of time and make sure you go to bed early for example.
You can’t go to bed at midnight or 1:00 a.m. and expect that you’re going to get up at 5:00 and feel great, so you have to realize that in order to do whatever it is you want to do in that time slot you have to practice doing it beforehand you have to practice going to bed at 9:00 or 10:00 p.m. in order to get the results that you want of getting up at 5:00 a.m.
So time management starts before the actual time.
2. Start using gCalendar.
If you have a gmail account, you automatically have a gCalendar account ,you can just click on the little icon in the top. and a calendar will open – you can use this on your computer, you can use it on your phone, you can use it everywhere.
This is like my lifeline I use a lot of other tools for my planning and my time but gCalendar is the foundation of it and I look at it always in the month view so I can see all 30, 31 days of the month, and I can see how busy I am what I have coming up, I can see how I’ve planned my time what free time I have and then during the actual week that I’m in I will look at the week view so I can see the flow of my work and my free time and what’s going on.
I constantly am looking at this, like I’m looking at my gCalendar probably 20 minutes a day like combined of all the minutes throughout the day so if you’re not in the habit of this yet and you’re finding it difficult to get it to be a habit I suggest starting to look at gCalendar on the hour every hour.
This will start to get your brain in the routine of thinking that it should be looking at it even though you know that first couple days to a week it’s going to be more intentional on your part but I promise you if you start using gCalendar your time is just going to improve naturally by focusing so much on the time.
3. Get really good at saying no.
Why is it so hard? I don’t know – we love it to say yes, we love to be part of the group, it’s just our human nature we want to people please and whatever else but the more that we’re saying yes to everyone else’s wants of us, the less we can say yes to ourselves because there’s only 24 hours in the day so you need to get really good at saying no when you want to say no.
The worst thing you can do for your time is say yes when you want to say no. So I encourage you to practice at least once a day saying no say no to yourself if that’s like you want to binge watch some TV say no to what other people ask of you if you don’t want to do it like going out instead of working on this project you have or whatever it is practice saying no – that will save you a ton of time.
4. Ask yourself can this wait for whatever comes your way
Ask yourself can this wait whenever you feel like you’re going to jump to the next project. I actually do this a lot with house chores, specifically laundry. I love to have my laundry just like done and I love to have everything organized so it takes a lot of time. Well, what I’ve implemented is I look at my laundry and I say can this wait and the answer is usually yes so I make sure that I’m focusing on those tougher high-priority more important things instead of what feels sort of urgent and like a quick win because that would distract me and take away a lot of my time.
So anytime something comes up that I think I’m switch my focus to I always ask can this wait and eventually the laundry will get to be so high that I have to do it the answer is no it can’t wait and that’s how you know that you’re not shifting back and forth and trying to multitask and do everything and instead always prioritizing what’s most important to you.
SEE ALSO: The Key To Dignity And Self-Esteem: Why Appreciation Is Important In Life?
5. Stop the small talk.
Now when I first heard this it like broke my heart. It was from my business partner and he implements this across this company and in his life he only answers the phone for his wife, if someone just texts him hi or messages him at work and just says „hi” – he says he doesn’t reply at all.
He doesn’t want to do the small talk, he doesn’t want to talk about the weather. iI’s such a time suck and for people like me who love to network and chat – you waste a lot of time this way and I really never thought of it this way.
So in my life that’s something that I’m working on right now is cutting out that small talk that just seriously wastes time and making sure instead that I’m always specifically asking someone a question, if I have a question or making sure other people are just contacting me and asked me specific questions or there’s a point to the communication and not just „oh it’s raining today”.
You get what I’m saying – the small talk is kind of a time stuck so make sure that you are doing minimal small talk if it’s appropriate.
6. Do a time journal once a week
Pick a day of the week, it doesn’t really matter which and document your time from the
time you get up to the time you go to bed write it down just like you would if you’ve ever done a food journal to track your calories write down exactly what you’re doing with your time.
If you’re on Facebook, if you’re on Instagram, if you’re checking email, if you’re just hanging out if you’re just playing with your kids or the dog, if you are taking a nap, if you’re doing house chores, if you’re working or driving – write it down for an entire day, and you will be amazed at how much time you waste.
Even the most productive people who are so good at time management will find that you’re wasting time and this just brings you more awareness and if you do this every week or every other week you’ll start to get better at time management because what you track what you measure improves right.
The only way that you can improve is if you’re paying attention to it, focusing on it and knowing where you are right now, so that you can move in the future and get better at it.
7. Have a plan for checking your email and social media accounts.
You like wake up in the morning and you just grab your phone you’re checking Instagram or whatever. Don’t do this. Don’t check your email or social media until 12:00 p.m. because you’re most productive in the morning.
You’re going to have the freshest mind in the morning and you really don’t want to waste that type of energy on your tasks and emails and social media that could be done with very minimal energy later in the day.
So just pick a time have that be a constraint in your life, so that you are not wasting that valuable time in the morning.
8. Do not over schedule.
This is so hard but just like you need a buffer in your checking account in your bank account, you need a buffer in your schedule. You need time to decompress, you need time to get it together, you need time to work on yourself whether that’s meditating or
journaling or just relaxing – make sure you’re not over scheduling this will kill your time because you’ll be rushing around and you won’t show up as the best version of yourself.
So schedule that extra buffer downtime.
SEE ALSO: How To Get Your Life Back On Track After You Messed Up
9. Plan your day a based on energy.
Is that depending on who you are the person there are going to be certain times of day where it’s better to do things and other times of day. So if you are a morning person it’s so much better for you to do your productive tasks in the morning and in general it’s much better for you to do those mundane tasks like checking email replying to social media that sort of stuff in the afternoon or you know running errands the things that don’t require a lot of creative energy.
Now everyone’s a little bit different but there are general consistencies when you wake up refreshed and you’ve had enough sleep your brain is ready to go on working on those most difficult tasks, so think about how you can rearrange your schedule so that maybe you’re doing your projects and the big stuff that you want to accomplish in the morning and
maybe you’re working out at night or mid-afternoon so think about how you can structure your day.
10. Implement a morning routine that is intentional.
Now I know it’s so easy to get up in the morning and just get going and hustle but I highly encourage you to use whatever your time is from the alarm clock to the time that you start your workday, whatever that is, even if you’re an entrepreneur, stay-at-home mom, or you go to an office – the time from you get up to the time you start your workday should be used to kind of I call it “sharpening your saw” so you want to – it could be anything.
It could be journaling it could be practicing your religion it could be meditating or it could be taking that online course or it could be improving your new skill or taking a second language.
Whatever it is it’s sort of like your reserved time that you want to use to sharpen your saw during this period of your life. And when you always know that you’re going to be passively learning during that time and you’re going to be sharpening your saw to improve your skills, you’ll be ready to apply those skills you know the rest of the day.
So use that time intentionally and separate it out so you’re constantly growing and learning as a person.
11. Let go of people pleasing and perfectionism.
If you are a people pleaser or perfectionist, it’s going to be really hard for you to do this and if you’re not then it won’t be hard at all. So I am naturally – well I was a people pleaser and a maybe perfectionist – I am neither now and it is great.
I live in a much better place where I just own my time and I can let go of other people’s expectations of me I say no comfortably and I don’t really care about work that isn’t perfect. I love the saying be okay with good work and just get it out there to produce and you can go back later and make it better.
But when you live in this results based economy and you’re always producing you don’t have time to make it great work. If you live in that perfectionism you’re worried about what other people are going to think about your work and that keeps you stuck in producing about 1/10 of what you could be producing.
I love it when people give me feedback about like errors or mistakes in my writing I’m so happy. I genuinely am happy I’m like it’s it’s a free editor I just go and I fix it and no big deal. I don’t make it mean anything but they always tell me it with such hesitation, because I’m sure they told other people and other people don’t take it lightly and they take it very personally.
So you don’t have to take your mistakes so personally. You don’t have to make them mean anything and there is so much freedom in this because they mean nothing. You fix them and you move on. It has nothing to do with you at all.
12. Ask yourself the question „how can I improve my time management skills tomorrow?”.
So you ask yourself at night „how can I improve my time management skills tomorrow?”. And you ask yourself at every single night. What happens is when you ask your brain supportive questions like that your brain will go to work to find the answers for you.
If you ask the wrong questions it will also find the answers for you, so do not ask why do I suck at time management – your brain will tell you why. You want to make sure that you’re focusing on what you want the result to be so every night before you go to bed just kind of say how can I be better at time management tomorrow.
And you don’t have to say it out loud, you just kind of say to yourself, you can write it down if you want. You don’t sit and wait for the answer you just manifest it. You’re just getting your brain to think about it. Do that for like a week or two.
I bet you – I would be shocked if you don’t see results in your life. If you’re truly doing this, your brain will subconsciously be working on finding the answer and finding ways for you to improve in your life and time management.
So keep in mind throughout this whole thing I’ve been talking about ways that you can improve your time management skill.
Time management is a skill. You’re not just born that way you’re not just good at time management the skill set that you can improve so if you want to commit to yourself that you can actually do it and get better at it in the future.
Thank you for reading this article abou how to manage your time better and I really hope that you take action my advice. I wish you good luck and I hope its contents have been a good help to you.
