Managing Time

Managing your time is one of those things people have told you is important but few have any concrete answers on how to do it best. There are some effective ways to develop time management skills and soon you will find yourself with more time than you’ve had before.

The most important things to remember with time management are:

1.      Be organized

2.      Be informed

3.      Take notes

4.      Be flexible

Getting yourself organized will go a long way to having more time available to you. How much time have you spent searching for something? Learning to put your stuff in a single place so you know where it is all of the time will improve you technique. This is easily achieved by clearing off your desk and then becoming mildly obsessive about where you put your stuff. Keeping your layout constant will help you recognize when stuff is out of order so you can fix it.

Organization is more than just keeping your desk orderly, it’s also about getting directions when you need to go somewhere you’ve never been, or getting a list together for the store before you go.

In order to be informed, you must make sure that you know about everything that needs to happen in the next month, and set “one month” as the duration of your management. That means for every day that has passed, you must accept one more day into your month schedule of which you must be informed.

Things that you need to know will involved deadlines for projects for you or your family members, events in which you must make attendance such as appointments with medical professionals or company meetings, and holidays as they may interfere with project deadlines or other scheduling.

You keep track of these things by taking notes. Write down everything. It is not enough to be told and then expected to remember. Not everyone has instant recall and if you rely solely on that, then you have already lost the battle before it has begun. Don’t just write notes down on little, yellow, sticky pieces of paper. You have to keep a notebook or a journal where you have one central location for all of this. Part of time management is learning how to locate without searching.

Most importantly, you have to be flexible. Life is ever-changing and in order to be successful, you have to learn how to change with life. Nothing is set in stone and you must learn to shift dynamically.