Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living the result of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other opinions drown your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary – Steve Jobs
1 – You should learn to schedule all your plans and activities. It doesn’t matter how good your memory is. I can personally memorize hundreds of numbers in sequence forwards and backwards, but I’ll still forget activities without writing them down. Every smart phone these days comes with a calendar. I personally use Google calendar, but there’s enough apps out there to choose from. Or if calendar apps aren’t for you, then get a physical agenda book. I personally use the Panda Planner.
2 – Next you need to learn Pareto’s Principle, the 80-20 rule. This rule basically says that for many events, 80% of the effect comes from 20% of the cause. For most people, they only wear 20% of the clothes they own. In most cities, 80% of the traffic is on 20% of the roads. So applying this to time management, we need to find the most important tasks and do them first in order to maximize productivity. We have to understand that not all tasks in our to do lists are as important from one another. Unfortunately, the important tasks are usually the hardest from the list.
3 – Another way to create more time is by simply cutting deadlines in half. If you give yourself 2 weeks to complete a task, it will take 2 weeks. If you give yourself only 1 week, it will take 1 week. Psychologically speaking, the task will increase in complexity. This is also known as Parkinson’s law. We tend to equate how difficult a task is by how long we have to complete it. This is how many procrastinators are able to do so much work when they leave things to the last minute.
4 – There is also delegating tasks. This simply means finding or hiring people to do tasks for you, so you can focus on doing the more productive ones.
5 – Another big way to create more time is by sacrificing some activities. For me it was giving up video games and significantly reducing how much television I watched. What can you give up for your goals and dreams.
6- Practice saying some time management affirmations.
7 – Lastly, learn to ask the right questions daily. Consistently find new ways to become more productive.
