There are 168 hours in a week and you don’t have time to go to the gym?
It all comes down to time management. Does everything seem too important to take out of your day? Don’t deny your health and fitness for so long that your body could eventually let you down. Prevent yourself from getting to that stage. To get through all that life throws at you, you need to build a strong foundation. And that is your health! What’s “Urgent” and what “needs to be done”?
Here are our top tips on managing time:
1.Diary every 15 minutes of the day for 3 days.
Feeling like you have no idea where the time goes? Check and write down what you have done / are doing every 15 minutes for 3 days straight from wake up to sleep time. Go through your diary on that 4th day and have a look where all your time has gone! You would be surprised how much spare time you have or how inefficient or efficient you spend your time!
2.Keep the big picture in mind
As we get inundated, it is very easy to spend all our time putting out the day to day fires. As part of your weekly plan, divide time to take a step back and look at the big picture. Are the tasks and activities you are completing on a daily and weekly basis supporting the achievement of a larger goal or purpose?
3. Use a priority matrix to determine what to schedule first
Use the relationship between the urgency and importance as a tool to set priorities. It entails ranking tasks in regards to urgency and importance and the combination of the 2 gives you a priority level.
4.Be specific with start and end times
Items on your schedule should be defined with start times, durations and ending times. Creating a “to do” list for the day is not enough.
Be clear about what you are going to do, when you are going to do it and how much time you are allocating. You can get very clear on both what you will get done and what you will not be doing.
If you’re not clear on how long a task will take, overestimate the amount of time by 50 percent. If you finish early, you can always move on to another task and it avoids having yourself being committed to completing two tasks at the same time.
5. Schedule your tasks like they are an appointment.
Most of us are very good at keeping meetings and appointments when other people are involved. If you had a work meeting on Tuesday at 11 am, most of us would make that meeting.
Do you treat tasks that you need to get done the same way or are you more likely to have other items come up or get distracted? If you need to get a specific task or item complete, schedule it like you would a meeting for work and honour your commitment to it in the same way.
6. Be aware of your personal productivity curve
Schedule tasks at the appropriate time of day based on your personal productivity curve. We all have times of the day where we are more “on and alert” than others.
This is your 20 percent time in the 80/20 rule where 20 percent of your efforts are producing 80 percent of your results. Spend these times working on what is most import and valuable and not doing mundane tasks.
If your most productive time is first thing in the morning, don’t start the day weeding through your emails.
Use these simple tips to help you manage your time better and allow room for extra YOU time! What is life if we are not LIVING!
Make time for your health and fitness, without that you won’t have a strong foundation to get through all these things on your checklist!
