Time Management: A Couple of Quick Tip Reminders

Much has been written about Time Management - search the web and you will see it is not a new topic.  We are not going to invent a new solutions here.  But, we did run across some timeless “ideas” we thought we would share in the hopes they will help you manage things a bit easier in our highly distracted world.

Quick Tips:

1. Keep paper with you to jot down ideas or things you need to do.
2. Plan each day the night before and set your priorities – stick to them.
3. Keep a “to do” list.
4. Always keep long term goals in mind.
5. Do first things first – prioritize.
6. Start with the most difficult parts of a project.  Then when you have the difficult aspects completed, you may determine some of the easier things might not be needed.
7. Concentrate on one thing at a time – don’t multitask. It takes 20-40 percent more time to finish a task when you do – not easy to avoid in this day of cell phones, emails, instant messaging and social media.  (We will explore this more in the future.)
8. Examine your habits – look for ways to change unproductive ones or eliminate those all together.
9. Don’t take on to much – overloading can lead to poor performance on all tasks.
10. Use wait time – on a commuter train, bus or in the air, there is time to catch up on reading or planning.
11. Remind yourself – “There is always time to do the important stuff”!
12. Catching yourself wasting time or engaged in unproductive activities – stop as soon as you can.  Determine when the most productive time of the day is for you.  Then schedule critical task during this time.
13. When procrastinating ask yourself – “Why, what am I avoiding?”
14. Reward yourself when you get things completed.  Everyone needs positive reinforcement.