5 Ways To Make Time For Everything
Have you ever wished you had at least 5 more hours to fit in the day? Or maybe you were wondering how everybody else seems to accomplish so much, while you are stuck spinning the wheel, losing precious time and without any adequate results.
Well search no more – here are you top 5 tips using simple priorities that would kick your productivity into overdrive.
1. Own Your Time
Sure we all have miles long to-do list, or our boss tossing around new assignment as if they were candies on 5 YO birthday party, or maybe you are an aspiring entrepreneur who feels she has to work about 17 hours a day to make it work… point is: you are busy. I get this.
Now breath deep and reclaim back you own time! In the book “The Big Leap”, Gay Hendricks writes that you are in charge of your time. You are where time comes from. You can make as much of it as you want. So say to yourself right now, “I acknowledge that I am the source of my time”; and your stress will disappear the moment you accept that and you really claim ownership of it.
2. Declutter Your Priorities
If you take a moment to study world-class experts in nearly any field – athletes, artists, scientists, teachers, CEOs – you’ll see this is true. One characteristic that runs through all of them is focus.
As the first step, write down everything that has to be done, and then highlight only those tasks that are both important and urgent. Set priorities. Avoid the “last in first out” trap that many career girls experience. If you want to actually achieve your career goals instead of adding it to the list of diets to do, hobbies to pick up, languages and instruments to learn, and the like that you never actually finish, then practicing focus is the key
3. Think small
The big project is freaking you out? Overwhelmed by the mere idea of starting your own side gig?
Stop!
What? No, don’t drop the entire idea, just stop obsessing about it – think small instead.
Everyone is on the lookout for tactics and hacks that can make success easier, but here’s the best one: start small. A life makeover is something massive and ambitious, but there’s no need to eat the entire elephant at once. Whether it’s with your habits or with the actual goals being accomplished, the bigger the project, the harder it is to do. So you don’t have to apply for four job positions a day, or jump right into med-school, or finish nineteen tasks every day. Instead, tone it down a bit and do something like: reach out to the social network of your dream career twice a week. Eventually, with small steps you’re sure to commit to, it becomes super manageable, attainable, and even fun!
4. Outsource you tasks
Stop wasting time on things you are not good at and on tasks that don’t give a concrete edge into realizing your dreams.
If somebody else is more suitable for doing the job; why are you doing it? Delegation and outsourcing allow you to hand the job off to someone who can complete it successfully, allowing you to focus on more important activities.
Sure not everyone can afford a private assistant, a chauffeur and your in-house cook (would life be awesome if we could?), but there are definitely small things you can drop from your own to-do list to make a bit more room for fun. Maybe a cleaning lady once every two weeks? Maybe more responsibility to you kids (if they are old enough)? How about asking your boss to allocate another person to partially help you with this particular project? Or maybe just deciding that not everything has to be prefect all the time… and letting go of some annoying little assignments,.. well just because.
5. Batch everything up
Batching is when you group similar tasks into blocks of time. During this time you have no distractions. Did you know that every time you are distracted, it takes 15 minutes to regain complete focus again? Examples are only looking at emails or social media at certain times of the day. Setting a timer, shutting off distractions and only working on your dream business/ jon research/ updating you CV for a given time. I also recommend batching errands, meal planning, meetings, laundry or personal appointments – really I don’t write about cooking (trust me, you wouldn’t want to read that – but batching my meal preparation and freezing them has changed my life!)
Setting priorities, batching, outsourcing, and the other ideas mentioned are just the beginning, but as you make them part of your daily habits, the road to your goals will get a lot smoother!
Main Photo Credit: CEA +
