Time Management

 

Time management is truly a fundamental “make or break” in the life of anyone. The wise use of time produces powerful results and the misuse of time can be devastating. Today, we’ll provide some tips on how to manage this invaluable and wasting (constantly diminishing) resource.

 

1. Roles and Goals

The first step in time management is to understand your roles and goals as an individual. Take a minute to write down each of your roles: husband/wife, father/mother, employee, boss, volunteer, student, coach, etc. Experts recommend having no more than 6-7 roles in fear of becoming spread too thin. Now, once you’ve established your critical roles, write down two to three goals for each role. These goals should guide all of your time management.

 

2. Conduct a Time Analysis

Take three days and write down everything you’ve done for each 30 minutes. At the end of the time period, tally up the hours spent on each task. Does your time allocation match your roles and goals? If not, make some adjustments!

 

3. Scheduling

There are three main scheduling times that a person should emphasize. Monthly/quarterly, weekly and daily. Making sure to plan what you do in varied time segments is essential to making sure you accomplish the most important tasks that will help you reach your longer term goals. With your day-to-day scheduling, making an “ABC” prioritized to-do list is key. A’s must get done, B’s should get done and C’s would be nice to get done that very day.

 

4. Eat the Frog

Finally, a question. If you woke up every morning and the first thing you did was eat a live frog, would anything else you encounter for the rest of the day be worse than that? Apply that principle and pick your biggest, hairiest, nastiest most difficult to-do and conquer it first thing in the morning. This will give you the momentum you need to tackle  the rest of your goal oriented tasks and will guide you on the path of fulfillment and accomplishment.

We wish you the best!