How To Manage Your Time Effectively And Achieve Your Goals For The Day
Time is the currency of life, and we have a limit supply of it. There are only 24 hours of time available in a day for us to use, and that means our success in achieving our goals depends hugely on how well we are able to manage and use this time each day.
Time management is a skill you must develop to be able to get more important things done, and be able to achieve your set goals. If you set great goals for your life and you are not able to achieve them, the improvement that you desire will never materialize.
It is important for you to know that to realize your dream, you need to set and achieve your goals; and to achieve your goals, you need to assign time (from the fixed 24 hours in a day) for their execution, and ensure that the time is used for the purpose.
Effective time management is not easy to attain, but it can be learned, and with consistent practice, it can become habitual.
I want to share with you ways by which you can effectively manage your time every day, and enjoy the feeling of fulfillment that comes with being able to achieve your set goals.
1. Writing a To-do List Daily
This is the starting point in being able to make the best of your time each day in working on your goals. Before starting the day’s work, write down the tasks you would want to accomplish that day in order of their importance. That is, the tasks that relate to your major or most important goals should be first on the list, while those that relate to minor or less important goals, the last.
It is important to list your tasks in this order because, just in case you are not able to accomplish all the tasks at the close of the day, you will still feel happy seeing that the tasks required to achieve your major goals were done.
You would be motivated to continue to prepare a to-do list each day before beginning work, and with time it will become a habit, and then you will be able to accomplish a lot more or all of your set tasks for the day.
The tasks you couldn’t complete for the day of cause will be moved to the next day’s to-do list where they will be placed in order of their importance.
Notice that the great thing about writing a daily to-do list in this order is that it focuses your time, energy, and other resources that you may have squarely in gradually achieving your goals, beginning with the major ones, rather than dissipating them on other things that do not have anything to do with your goals.
And as the day go by, you will gradually see your dream life coming true because you have been able to manage your time well in doing what you needed to do to achieve your goals.
You may prefer to make your To-do list using any of the many electronic task schedulers or organizers, which technology has made available. That’s cool, but I still prefer to take an index card or piece of paper and a pen and write mine down. Somehow, by doing this I tend to complete more tasks for the day.
In fact, psychologists agree that writing down a task to be done makes it easier to accomplish it. And the reason is simply that when you write down your tasks for the day on paper, the process of taking a piece of paper and writing on it makes your whole being to be involved in creating the list, and so it registers more in your mind that the tasks must be done. For this, the cells, tissues, and relevant organs of the body are stimulated to release the needed energy, concentration, and alertness to accomplish the tasks.
Also, having your tasks for the day on paper, pasted on the table or wall, puts it in your view almost every minute. This pushes you to work on them, even when you don’t feel motivated.
2. Assigning Specific Time To Tasks On Your To-do List
Writing a to-do list without assigning a specific time to completing the tasks in it is not enough, the whole essence of preparing the list will be defeated. Since what we are trying to achieve in preparing a to-do list is to manage the limited time we have to use in a day, there is need to allocate time to each task for the list to achieve its purpose.
For each task on the list, state the time the task is to commence and end. For instance, see a short to-do list for the day below:
1. Write the topic for my new book: Five things to do every morning to loss
weight – 7am–11am (4hrs.)
2. Write article for my blog, title: How to choose the right food to
eat – 11:30am–1:30pm (2hrs.)
3. Read and reply emails – 1:30pm-3:00pm (1hr 30mins).
Assigning a specific time to starting and completing a task makes you accountable for the time you have for the day. You know what you should be doing at a particular time of the day, and if you find yourself not doing it, you can quickly switch and get back on track.
However, you should apply some flexibility in working out your schedule. If a task is taking longer time to complete than you anticipated, adjust your schedule a bit and add more time to it. The next time you are performing such task, you would know how much time it will take to complete.
3. Avoid Time Wasters
The major reason lots of people don’t achieve their set goals for the day is that they spend lots of time on activities that are not relevant to their goals. In other words they allow time wasters to steal their time.
There are so many time wasters out there you have to be careful of not giving your time to. These include reading and responding to emails, using social network site, meeting and chatting to friends, watching TV, movie, and making or receiving telephone calls.
To identify what time wasters are consider this: any activity that does not help achieve any of your goals for the day is a time waster.
There is nothing wrong with reading and responding to emails, but if it is not an activity in your to-do list that day or within the time period you have set aside to accomplish certain goals, it will be a time waster to be doing it at the time allotted for another task.
Time wasters will always be there, fighting for your attention and time. Sometimes it can be really tempting not to succumb your time to them. There can be serious pressure on you to suspend other things and attend to them, however, to achieve your set goals for the day, you must stick to your gun, and insist that you complete the tasks on your to-do list first before attending to other activities.
How best you manage your time and achieve your set goals for the day will depend on you writing a plan for using your time for the day, and how much you are disciplined not to allow activities that are not in your to-do list to take your time.
I’m sure following this simple guide will help you manage your time well and achieve lots more of your goals each day.