Finding and using strong time management skills only helps people to achieve focus, is an improvement in motivation and results in goal achievement. Personal time management skills are essential for individuals who are effective in their personal, business and relationship lives. Using time management skills well enable anyone to function exceptionally, even under intense pressure.
By integrating time management with focus, motivation and mindset, any individual can become a powerhouse within an organization or within their own families. Mastering these skills helps an individual to take control of their work load and say goodbye to stress.
At the heart of any time management program is an important shift in your own paradigm: you must concentrate on getting results and not on being busy. Most of us spend our days in a frenzy of activity but don’t achieve very much because what we are focused on is the activity and not on the results. The 80/20 rule sums this up nicely. It means that 80% of unfocused effort generates only 20% of the overall results. This means that the remaining 80% of results are achieved with only 20% of the effort.
That ratio is not always 80:20 but the broad pattern remains the same. When an individual applies time management skills they can optimize their efforts, ensure concentration and focus the energy in order to reap high payoffs in their tasks. This also means that it may require less time and energy in order to achieve the results you already set as a goal.
Here are some simple and practical techniques that will help you eliminate some common time wasters and focus on some of the most important short-term activities.
Once you understand that you must focus on the results and not on the task of being busy you must then prioritize your results in order to understand which ones should be addressed first. These priorities can be in business, relationships, homeownership and even childrearing. There are excellent tools to help you figure out what is most important in your life, but, if you are able to focus sufficiently you should be able to bring to mind the most important goals in your relationship with your spouse, significant other or children as well as your desires at work and for recreational play.
Using that list you should then prioritize which results under each of the categories is most important to you. These are the results for which you will strive are just. Your next step is to also identify the things that are in your way, or the reasons why you procrastinate. Some of these reasons may be time management skills while others could be psychological obstacles hidden in your personality. Depending upon your own personal situation you may have difficulty saying no, delegating responsibilities to others or making time management decisions for yourself.
The psychological component of time management must be dealt with in order for you to achieve significant positive results in your desire to reach your goals.
After determining why you procrastinate and what your priority list is, you also may want to find out how you spend your time currently. This can help you identify times during your day when your time management skills are at their least or tasks which can be totally eliminated from your daily list.
Other effective aids which can help you in your time management skills are to create a simple “to do” list. This helps you identify a few items which must be accomplished every day and helps you to stay focused during the day. You may also create a list that goes further in time and has specific tasks related to each goal.
Individuals who struggle with time management should always keep daily and weekly planners. In this way they can write down meetings, classes and appointments in chronological order which creates a visual schedule. These schedules should be checked the night before and first thing in the morning in order to be prepared for the day.
A long-term planner can help individuals to plan ahead for specific lectures, papers, business tasks or personal goals in order to remind the individual about the dates as well as help to constructively plan their time in order to achieve the goal.
Remember that developing time management skills as a journey or a process is not something that happens overnight. You develop the time management skills you possess right now over a period of years, not months or days, but years. You can change and improve your time management skills but only with patience and understanding for yourself and the particular challenges that you face on a daily basis.
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