Do you ever struggle with knowing how to manage your time the right way? You aren’t alone. In fact, one of the most regular points that crops up when I ask clients what they find most difficult and need help with; it’s time management.
Time goes so quickly…
Time is a big subject which can of course mean many different things to many different people. During our week, so many of us feel we’re constantly running out of time – one minute it’s Monday afternoon, next minute it’s suddenly Friday morning and we haven’t managed to complete even half of the tasks we set out to accomplish at the beginning of the week. We end up feeling defeated, anxious and of course, stressed when we don’t manage our time the most effectively. This feeling of ‘losing’ time can of course come from a business perspective and a personal one. How many of us end up not being able to find the time for ‘fun’ during our weeks? How many of us tell ourselves that we’ll make time for that fitness class, we’ll go watch that film at the cinema, we’ll go to that pizza place around the corner, we’ll get up early before work and take a swim at the local leisure centre, but we never do – we can’t find the time.
We all have the same amount of time…
Isn’t it fascinating that we all have the same amount of time given to us during a week yet how we spend it and how we use it is entirely our choice! When it comes to choosing how to spend our time in both a personal and business manner – It’s those key decisions we take that can ultimately change everything, and sometimes we benefit from those decisions for the very best.
Without sounding too depressing, sadly, we don’t ever know how much time we have left, which makes it even more important that we owe it to ourselves and to others to treat time respectfully and wisely.
Managing our time is one of the most important things we can ever learn to do. But it’s knowing how exactly to manage our time that is key.
Time Management Tips
Below are a few tips that I’d love you to take away with you today. If you like these ideas and tips and if you find they do make a difference – stick to them and use them whenever you need to. Over time, hopefully, you’ll see an improvement with your time management skills.
Email blocking: Instead of checking and reading emails constantly as they come in throughout the day, why not designate certain times in the day when you’ll read and respond? This way, your flow won’t be interrupted.
Creating a morning routine: Waking up in the morning with so many things on your mind is definitely not the best way to wake up – we all know that. So, why not make things easier for yourself by taking the first 15 minutes of your day to plan out the rest of your morning? This way, you’ll hopefully find that you wake up feeling less stressed and anxious about trying to fit in as much as possible into your mornings before it’s suddenly the afternoon!
Scheduling blank space: Scheduling blank space is just as important as scheduling other tasks. We never know when the unexpected will happen, make sure you’ve got time to absorb it when it does.
Scheduling your work in batches: We all know how important and how vital a schedule is. But do we know how important it is to be specific in our calendar? We don’t just need to be specific, we obviously need to be realistic too. Hopefully, you’ll find the more specific you are with scheduling your work in batches – the less chance of them getting overlooked.
Managing our time is one of the trickiest skills to improve, please feel free to take away whatever you wish to from this article, and of course – come back to it whenever you need!
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