One of the biggest areas that you seek personal development is to acquire time management skills, so as to learn to use your time wisely. As a person you are faced with many demands on your time some of them pressing demands and related directly to your major responsibilities. You have to exercise self-discipline as well as good judgement to allocate your time, which is always in short supply, to activities that will bring you the biggest return.
To be able to accomplish this, you need to have a good idea of the relative importance of your various activities and responsibilities, unless you can establish such priorities, you tend to allocate your time according to emergency or mood of the moment. The task that gets your attention frequently will not be the most important one.
Time management is one of the most important personal development skills you can acquire. The simple truth is to get the most out of your life you cannot afford to squander time.
Once you get in control of your time management, you will get more done in less time than you ever thought possible. You will take complete control over your life.
Almost everyone feels that their time management skills could be vastly better than they are. People resolve, over and over again, to get serious about time management but it seems to be one of those things that plaques them over and over again, standing in their way, time being wasted, never being able to make the most of it.
Because time is your scarcest resource, it is so essential that we preserve it at all costs. Time is irreplaceable, once gone it can never return.
Be selfish with your time. Remember, your time is your life, and this life is not a rehearsal for something else. Say “no” to requests for your time that don’t move you toward your own goals and personal aspirations. When you say “No,” people will often express a little disappointment. Nonetheless, you should stick to your guns.
The core function of good time management is planning and organizing yourself, and your work, for maximum productivity. To get the most out of your day you have to be performing on your top priorities.
There are five key questions that you can ask yourself regularly to assure that you are working on your top priorities, and getting the very most done that is possible for you.
Question one: “Why am I on the payroll?” Ask yourself if what you are doing right now is the most important thing that you have been hired to do.
Question two: “What are my highest value activities?” Remember, there are only a few things that you do that account for most of the value of your work. What are these activities?
Question three: “What are my key result areas?” What are the specific results that you have to get in order to do your job in an excellent fashion? Of all those key result areas, which are most important?
Question four: “What can I, and only I do that if done well will make a real difference?” What is the one thing, hour by hour, that only you can do, that if you do it well will make a significant contribution to your business? This is something that no one else can do for you. If you don’t do it, it won’t be done
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Question five: “What is the most valuable use of my time, right now?”
Keep track of how efficiently you use your time. The more you think about how you are spending your minutes and hours, the better and more precise you will become at time management. Because they do not monitor their time usage, most people are not even aware of the amount of time they waste each hour, let alone each day.
Get a wristwatch with an alarm that beeps every fifteen minutes. Each time the alarm sounds, stop and observe yourself. Look at what you are doing at that moment. If possible, keep a time log and make a note of what you are doing each time the alarm rings.
Ask yourself regularly, “Is what I am doing right now the very best use of my time?”
The more attention you pay to the way you are using your time, the more efficient and productive you are likely to be. The more aware you are of the fleeting nature of time, the better you will use it.
It is essential that you manage yourselves more effectively within your own time constraints and to organise and prioritise your tasks in a professional manner.
Let me know your time management secrets. Share them with us in a comment!
p.s. Life Coaching can help you make the most of your time and improve your life. Life coaching will teach you highly effective ways to learn and implement time management skills. If you want life changing coaching email me for further details. I only deal with a few clients each month, and those I choose have to be truly ready to take action. If that’s you, contact me today at coach@larry-lewis.com
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Time is something you cant get back and there are only 24 hours in a day. So how come some people can get everything done whilst others just look busy? Is it just about time management? This definitely plays a huge part, however I believe that setting goals and staying focused until you reach your goals is also important. The ability to do this comes from having clarity about what it is that you want to achieve and not letting distractions get in the way. Or for that matter making excuses and procrastinating about whether to do something or not. Once you have a clearly defined goal and stay focused for as long as possible until you achieve it, then you will be making good use of your time.