Effective Time Management

 Do you ever end your days feeling like you just haven't achieved enough? Do you find yourself staying late at work to get everything finished? Do you feel like you are missing out on the best things in life because you don't have enough time?



 If you answered yes to any or all of the above questions you are probably not feeling too good right now. Maybe work is not going how you would like. Or you do not have time to spend with your children that you feel they deserve.

 Do not fret, your worries could soon be over. These time worries are fixable, and it is not as difficult to your think. Simply by changing the way you approach the use of your time you can find the hours to do all the things you want to, and even have some time left over. Not only will this help you manage your time more effectively, it can help you to achieve the things you really want to in life.

 For effective time management, manage yourself

 We have only so much time in each day. This is something that you have to accept because it will not change. While you may not be able to control this, you can manage yourself. Once you realize this you have taken the first step towards effective time management. You must train yourself to focus on the things that really matter to you and spend your time on these things only. Everything else should be eliminated from your life.

 Making the changes necessary to manage your time effectively can be rewarding and fun, but some of these changes will take a leap of faith on your part. However, there is no need to rush, you can make the necessary changes at your own pace. If you bite off more than you can chew at the beginning there is a chance you may fail.

 For effective time management, understand yourself

 To really manage your time effectively you must first learn to know yourself. In modern society there are so many distractions we can easily lose our focus on what we really want in our lives. It is amazing that we can let this happen to us, but it happens all too easily.

 So before you can really begin to look at your time management you need to figure out what you want out of life. This is where you find your vision. Cast yourself back to when you were an adolescent or a young adult, a time when anything seemed possible. What were your dreams and aims when you were that age? What you wanted then may really be what you want now, it may just be that you have lost sight of your true vision.  No doubt, some priorities will have changed, but many will have remained the same.

 Also ask yourself how you would like your personal and professional life to be. And think about what is possible for you and what you can really achieve. We will call this your vision.

 Where are you now?

 By now, you should have a reasonable idea of what you would like your life to be like. So here comes the tough part. You need to look at your life now and compare it to your vision, to how you would really like your life to be like. If you are writing all of this down, the difference between the two probably will not make for very pleasant reading.

 However, no matter how wide the gap is between your ideal reality and how you live your life now, it can be bridged. You may think of effective time management as a tool that will help you to get you to meetings on time. Not true. Effective time management can transform your life on a much more fundamental level.

 Achieving your ideal reality will involve little changes and big changes in your life. A small change would be something like taking a walk every evening. A big change might be starting up your own business. However, if you put your mind to it you could achieve either of these. You will have to take a close look at how your hours are spent and make the necessary adjustments so you can achieve what you want to achieve.

 The 4 Ds of time management

 Now you can move onto looking more closely at the things you need to do each day and deciding how to handle them. This is where the 4 Ds of time management come in. They are:

 *  Do it - This needs to be done immediately. * Delegate it - It needs to be done, but someone else can take care of it. * Dump it - This is not important, thrash it. * Defer it - Something for the 'to do' pile. Come back to it later.

 You should be able to file any task that arises in your average day under one of the four Ds.

 Time wasters

 Now let's look at time wasters. Time wasters can destroy any attempt at effective time management if they are not identified and eliminated. This is mainly because they can be very hard to spot and are often the most trivial things.

 These are some time wasters to watch out for:

 * Lack of or poor planning - File things properly, write down appointments, that kind of thing. Basically, you need to be organized to use your time effectively.

 * Procrastination - If you keep putting things off you will miss all the best opportunities in life.

 * Not delegating - You can't do it all yourself. Do the things that you are good at and enjoy. Someone else can do the rest.

 * Interruptions - Don't let clutter and noise eat into your productive time. Make sure there are no interruptions when you want to work.

 Try to identify the time wasters that are holding you back and eliminate them from your life.

 These pointers should help you in your first steps towards effective time management. Breaking old habits isn't easy so take the changes you need to make one step at a time. As you take it step by step, you will gradually move closer to your ideal life, a life where there is plenty of time for the things you want to do.