Before you can plan your day, you need to know how you're currently spending your time. I know planning and tracking your time might seem to take even more time away from your day, but you can't use your time more efficiently if you don't know where it's going in the first place.
Balancing time expenditures reduces stress. It brings success and fulfillment to careers and personal lives. Consider all the important areas in your life, and your values for each of them. Consider areas such as family, health, career, relationships, spirituality, and relaxation. Take into account your responsibilities and activities within each of these areas. Balanced living brings contentment that is often absent in today's fast moving world.
Time is money, so you need to watch your time as carefully as you watch your money. People who don't watch their money tend to spend too much and wind up poor. Another thing to remember, people who don't watch their time tend to waste their time and get nothing done.
This is how you can keep track of how you spend a 24 hour day period. Carry a notepad with you and keep track of when you start and stop something. Let's say, if you start driving to work at 7:30 and arrive at work at 8:00, write that down. Some tasks, such as driving to work are straightforward. Other tasks may not have a definite beginning and end.
For example, you may spend the first hour at work making phone calls. But halfway through returning phone calls, you stop and chat with co-workers about the morning news or last night's TV shows. You've just started another task, so write down the time you started and stopped returning phone calls and now write down the time you started chatting with your co-workers. Do you think you can keep this ideal going throughout a 24 hour period?
This time testing procedure can be a nuisance. But the point is once you know how you're actually spending your time, you'll have a much better idea why you feel like you never have enough time. By tracking your time, you can see how much time you're putting towards your important tasks and how much time you're wasting throughout the day.
These are the secret weapons of professionals who are experts in the field of time management, because, let's face it, our lives have become very, very busy, and there will never be more than 24 hours in a day. With a few good strategies and a new outlook toward making the most of your time you will quickly get to the end of that "to do" list, lighten the stress of always being under the gun, and maybe even have a few minutes to spare!
Since your time has come for you to begin practice of excellent time management strategies, give yourself to the study of it. Observe some of the things you are doing that could be robbing you and your family of finances. Little habits you have picked up over the years that keep you from being productive. Learn what the wasters of your time thus wasters of your financial capabilities are. Study well so you can budget your time wisely. You'll find how truly successful you can become.
