10 Tips to Improving Time Management Skills
- Leave Time between tasks to prepare or deal with any commute. You can plan every moment, and the moment you stop giving yourself times between tasks is the very moment your day falls apart.
- Stop. Leave tasks for another time if they’re not imperative and if you’ll have more time on another day. If you do so much that you feel burnt out, it could affect tasks for your next scheduled day. It’s okay to say “today, I’ve done enough, this can wait”
- Create a daily, weekly, and monthly plan. Your daily plan should have the most detail. Your weekly tasks can be broader and your monthly plan should be things that happened to be scheduled. Don’t over schedule your week or month in advance, because it robs you of flexibility you may need on a later date.
- Give yourself an allotted amount of time for each task in advance. If you know it takes fifteen minutes, give yourself 20-25 minutes to do the task. It takes pressure off and if you make good time, may allow for you to relax at the end of your day before your have to prepare for your next.
- Delegate that s#%t! I try and do everything and then I a. resent Alex for not reading my mind and for not knowing I wanted him to stop and grab x on the way home… or I B. Resent myself for being a dumbass and for not asking for help when I don’t have enough time to do everything. What I’ve found is that for the most part, when I ask for help, he helps. So I’m not doing anyone any favors when I just sit and stew in my resentments unnecessarily.
- Bundle your business! Don’t clean with the same stuff four times in a day, bundle your tasks together and you’ll save time and be less distracted. Do Cleaning Tasks, then do meal prep tasks (or vice versa, just make sure your put like tasks together). If you need to make a zillion calls, give yourself an hour (or hour-and-a-half) to make your calls. Don’t scatter them and then miss one, or miss more because other tasks ran long and now its to late.
- Prioritize…. and Get rid of bulls#%t tasks. You should be on social media if you blog or need it for some reason, but you don’t need to spend more than fifteen minutes a day on any social media sites. If you’re spending all day reading about how wonderful the lives are of people you didn’t even like 25 years ago, your own life will be gone in a flash, and you wont have your own memories to show for it. Do the social media thing to promote your business or blog, but spend the real time in your life…. doing YOUR life. You wont regret it. You wont ever regret the extra blog post that ends up making you your first real revenue. You won’t regret pushing your kid on the swings a little more each day.
- Use a calendar! Alex had to remind me a billion times. Every smart phone has one built in. You can set an alarm for yourself or you can set one for you and someone whose better with that stuff on Google and have them remind you, eh oh!
- Say ‘NO!’. If you’re overrun with things and someone asks you for help with something that isn’t a matter of life or death, or that wont even inconvenience them if you say no, say no! Say it nicely, but say it. I never said no to people until I had kids, and nowadays, I even usually just schedule stuff once its convenient, but if its not a good time, I say so!
- Plan to be REALLY early. I was early to everything… my entire life before I had kids, I was always early. Then I had kids, and I wasn’t early ever again. BUT, I find if I plan to be an hour or even half hour early to get places, I get there less late. It’s all you can do sometimes. Some things you can’t be late to, so plan those days the best, but out of politeness, aim early always.
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