You cannot manage time; whatever you do, there will always be only 24 hours.
It takes us less time to do the things we love to do. We procrastinate and take more time to complete work we do not enjoy.
What we actually manage are our energies and not time.
Here are some tips I wish to share with you:
- Start with your physical energy. Don’t sleep with your phone. And stop binge-watching Netflix! I am not exaggerating; your Smartphone can destroy your life. Not only does binge-watching affect the quantity of my sleep; if I watch just 2 episodes of The Crown (or 4 of The Big Bang Theory) before sleeping, I keep waking up just after I have fallen asleep. And then I hate myself in the morning. I leave my phone downstairs now and I am sleeping like a teenager. Just having my phone around me keeps my mind awake.
- Exercise. Not only is it crucial for your health; the good people who are studying The Science of Happiness at the UC Berkely point to it as one of the factors that increases feelings of well-being. You do not need to go the gym. Get some routines from the internet, buy weights and then exercise while watching tv. Just do it.
- Help yourself to get motivated about parts of your job you do not like doing. You have heard the advice “ Find yourself a job you enjoy and you will never work a day in your life.” The reality is that for most of us, there will always be aspects of a job that are truly not enjoyable. No manager enjoys calling out dysfunctional behavior. We might not want to do boring, administrative tasks that however are crucial for compliance or risk management. Develop the self-awareness to understand why you put off doing some tasks. Do you need to develop managerial courage? Do you need to strengthen the skills to talk to your people? Can you delegate some parts of administrative work so that you don’t need to do too much of it? Find a solution.
- Trick your mind into making difficult or large projects seem easy. If I were writing an article for instance, I might make a deal with myself to write everyday for just 15 minutes. And of course, what happens is that I will write more than 15 minutes! If I get into the flow, I might just finish the article. But you see, I started writing because 15 minutes sounded easy!
- Focus on the reward and not on the task. I will tell myself “ By 9:00, you have to be in bed to read your delicious new book , so you better finish writing that report.” What happens is that many times , I want to write more and go beyond the self-imposed time limit. It is silly, but tricking my mind works.
- Do not make a “To Do “ list for the day and schedule your every hour. From experience, we know that the day will not happen as you planned it. Instead, determine what is the most important thing that you should do today- one that will have the greatest impact on revenues, relationships etc.. and then put this on top of your To Do Today List , along with the other important and urgent tasks for today. The productivity guru David Allen suggests a second list – Next Action Steps, things you need to complete within the week.
- Create your list of “Important but not Urgent” projects ( the leadership quadrant in Covey’s time management . )These plans are the biggies you need to break down into daily, weekly or monthly manageable activities so they do not seem overwhelming and remain a dream. These will go into your daily lists.
- Create a system so things do not fall into the cracks, specially if you are responsible for getting things done through other people. You can use the features in Outlook or an old fashioned notebook to monitor tasks that need to be completed. Ask your assistant to help you in monitoring.
- When you wake up in the morning, think of the things you are grateful for. It will give you tremendous energy for the day.
- Pray and seek God’s grace. ” More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.” Planning + prayer are two blades of the same scissor that will cut through the problems in our life.
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