Are You Managing Your Time Effectively?

We must use time wisely and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right. ~
 Nelson Mandela

Time = life; therefore, waste your time and waste of your life, or master your time and master your life. ~ Alan Lakein

1. Never spend time to manage time: If you don’t organize your day, you may get nothing done or busy doing something but nothing important gets done. Plan ahead and prepare a to-do list for the following day so that it will be a productive and meaningful day every day,

2. Refuse to get up in the morning: It is a sign that there are no goals in your life and there is nothing for the day to get you started early and working towards your objectives. Set goals and be enthusiastic to live life.   

3. Delay: You are not motivated and there is no willpower to get things done. Do things that mean a lot to you or develop an interest in what you do so that you may take prompt action to get things done quickly.

4. Busy but not effectively: You are not getting the most important tasks or high-priority items for the day done. You may be just attending to urgent but unimportant issues and do something as it crops up.

If you want to make good use of your time, you’ve got to know what’s most important and then give it all you’ve got. ~ Lee Iacocca

5. Not delegating: Don’t waste your time doing it all by yourself when you can delegate some of your work to others.

6. Not taking advantage of your peak performance period: You are effective when you allocate your peak energy period to tackle your most difficult and important tasks. You do it when you are energetic and your mind is fresh and alert.  

7. Spending too much time watching TV: Instead of watching TV, there are so many productive things to do. You can exercise to keep fit, do the washing up or learn something new. Even if you are not doing anything, it is still better to go to bed early and get up early the next day full of zest.

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book. ~   Groucho Marx

8. Not spending time to keep fit: You are also wasting time when you don’t spend time to be fit and healthy. You need to spend energy to get energy, to act fast and to be alert and, most of all, to avoid getting unwell and not doing what you like to do.

9. Too many interruptions and distractions: Things don’t get done when you are interrupted by too many telephone calls or distracted by online activities. Get offline when you want to do work and arrange for a block of time to work with full attention.   

10. Multitasking: It’s a waste of time to do more than one thing at a time. It is taxing the mind and you are prone to errors.  Worse still, you need to spend more time doing it all over again.

To do two things at once is to do neither. ~ Publius Syrus

11. Clutter: You are disorganized and there is no orderly filing in the office. You waste valuable time looking for things. At home, you don’t keep your keys and other items at the usual place and more time is wasted looking for them.

12. Unproductive during downtime: Be prepared when you know you need to wait in order to get things done. Take along some reading materials and catch up in your learning while waiting. When your energy is low you still can get things done by doing simple tasks instead of doing nothing.    

The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.
Michael Altshuler

Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else. ~ Peter F. Drucker