- Practice self-forgiveness: For starters, don’t beat yourself up too hard. Self-forgiveness can help you feel better about yourself. In fact, it lowers the likelihood of future procrastination.
- Reward yourself: If you manage to complete your tasks on time, treat yourself to a nice meal at a restaurant or something similar.
- Turn off your phone: This one may sound redundant, yet if you delve deeper and look at the University of Chicago's study on cellphones, which shows that even the mere presence of a wireless device badly impacts our cognitive capacity, you might want to reconsider.
- Day-to-day organizing, task prioritizing, and planning ahead are primary time management skills essential for using your time wisely. You should be able to assign levels of importance to different tasks, devise solid plans for their accomplishment, and stick to the strict schedules you set for yourself.
- Seemingly unrelated parts of your life, such as regular exercise, eating healthy and getting enough sleep, directly impact your overall efficiency and hence your ability to manage your time. These can be called secondary time management skills.
- Effective time management helps you organize your daily activities around your priorities. So, before you start working on improving your time management skills, take some time to identify your key and secondary priorities.
- When you're clear on what is most important to you, you can start discovering your preferred method for organizing your time. One effective method you could use is the Eisenhower Matrix.
- A variety of time management software exists to help you out in organizing tasks and tracking your overall productivity. Two very helpful tools are Rescuetime and Toggle Track.
- To make the best use of your time, you should focus on both core and secondary skills that we've discussed (including your overall health and stress levels).
- When you master effective time management, you shall enjoy more time for yourself, reduced stress, enhanced work-life balance, and more stamina to start achieving your dreams!
- Effective time management helps you organize your daily activities around your priorities. So, before you start working on improving your time management skills, take some time to identify your key and secondary priorities.
