Spring cleaning, planning your summer vacation, family birthdays, open-air concerts, new movies in cinemas, unique program opportunities that you do not want to miss?
You are interested in so many things, you are always busy, but at the end of the day you feel like you haven’t done anything? Then you probably took too many tasks or you do too much activities which doesn’t really matter to you. Effective time management is not only about writing to-do lists. As I struggled a lot to find the balance between my todos, I developed a simple method with which I check my time management from time to time. No hocus pocus, just only common sense.
Step 1 – Reflect
It’s hard to plan your schedule if you don’t even know how you spend your time. Pay attention to yourself for at least 1 week and write down what did you do in every minute. Be honest to yourself, write also if you spent 30 minutes watching cute puppies on Youtube, or just fed your dinosaurus on your phone. Pay attention to the moments when you felt energetic, when it was easier to work effectively. What kind of activities give you energy? What are the things that takes energy from you? What are your conclusions?
Step 2: Decide and prioritize
One day is only 24 hours and you need to have rest too. Think on your long-term goals. How do you want to spend your time? If you feel that you can’t do everythink you want because of time limits, decide how you want to start. You can sent monthly or weekly priorities. For example in the next 3 months I will learn to cook, after it I will do a masseur course. Isn’t it easier than learning massage and cooking at the same time?
Step 3: Plan
Once you know what tasks are the most important to you, than it’s time to replan your activities. Insert firstly your fix activities into your calendar, than fill up the empty parts with all your tasks. In order to your reach your goals, you may need to make sacrifies. For example, you may not have so much time to party until 3 a.m. every weekend, or go hiking in the beautiful weather. On the other hand, keep in mind to have rest and reload your batteries with activities which give you energy. Try to find the balance between your tasks. Try to get out the most of the time you spend with travelling or waiting somewhere.
Step 4: Review
Well done, nice, you planned your next week, but if you don’t check your calendar in the next 3 weeks, than it didn’t have any sense. Review your calendar at least once a week, recheck your plans, cancel irrelevant events and add the new ones to it. Try out new methods, see what is the best for you, and restart again the whole process. If you feel again that you do not spend your time on activities you want, go back to step one.
Since we’re changing continuously, our desires, habits are also changing, always something different will be important for us. Your time management will be effective if your daily activities follow these changes. I will share with you soon some practical methods which can help you to scheduling your tasks. Till than, reflect on your current habits, decide what is important to you, prioritize accordingly, plan your schedule and review everything. Let me know how it works for you!
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