Time Management ; Not So Hard

Imagine if there was a situation where you had to eat a frog every single day. Imagine at what time of the day would you eat that frog. Brian Tracy, who is the CEO and consultant of many successful companies says that the best time to eat this frog will be early in the morning, right after you wake up. This is because eating a frog is a difficult task and if you can get it out of the way early in the morning then you can spend the rest of your day being more productive. The frog represents whatever important work you have which needs to be completed as soon as possible. Most of the times, we delay our most important work by procrastinating. We think we will do it later once we have more energy which maybe in the second half of the day. It increase your stress and makes you more unproductive. Another reason behind completing the task early in the morning is that our willpower is the highest in the morning and then decreases throughout the day so we can take advantage of this and use our willpower at its maximum to finish our work. You must have noticed, when we finished doing some work especially an important task we feel good and relaxed. This happens because our brain releases ‘endorphins’ which makes us feel good and relaxed. Now in order to be more successful we need to take this process of completing a task and feeling relaxed as a positive addiction and make it our habit because completing an important task daily will make us feel good and also increase our confidence and self-esteem. I'll share in this article, the practicle ways to make this happen, so you could start applying them immediately. Through these steps you can make a proper use of your time and achieve your goals and success with ease.

Principle no. 1 - Setting the table

One of the most important reasons why we do not utilize our time properly and procrastinate is confusion and lack of clarity. For example, when I get confused about which subject should I study first during the preparation leaves of exams, I get more distracted by other work and waste more time. For once, I decide what my subject should be, then I utilize my time properly. Similarly if you want to use your time properly and want to become more successful, then you need to be very clear about your goals and targets and to do this accurately you need to follow a seven step procedure which is as follows;

step 1 - Decide exactly, what you want

You should decide exactly what Is that you want with regards to your financial life, your health, your relationships and your social life and also be very clear about other important aspects of your life about your goals. This way you can avoid wasting your time and hard work on things that weren't your goals in the first place.

step 2 - Think on paper

Only three percent of people write their goals on paper and this habit increases the chances of completing your goals by 5 to 10 percent. Our brain is not very good at storing data but it is very good at creating new ideas and information. So try to make a habit of writing all your important and creative ideas down on paper. You can even do it on your phone if you don't have a paper.

step 3 - Make deadlines

After writing your goals and ideas on paper give a deadline to it. It is very important to give a deadline to something, if you really want to complete that task or work. Otherwise you will keep delaying it.

step 4,5 - Make and organize a list

Make and Organize the list and make plans after making a list of all the work which comes in your mind. Organize it properly and then make a simple plan about how you will finish the work.

step 6 - Take action on your plan

After making the plan, take action immediately because an average plan with an execution is much better than a great plan with no execution. Do not think more about this, just take action because at the end of the day only action will give you results and not planning.

step 7 - Make a resolve to do things everyday that move you toward your goal

Read books, learn from mentors, learn new skills which will help you complete your target or at least do a little bit of work every day. which will bring you one step closer to your goals. This was a seven step procedure which is very helpful for setting your goals and achieving them.

Principle number 2 - Time Management

This principle has a 6’P formula which says, 1)proper 2)prior 3)planning 4)prevents 5)poor 6)performance. Before starting any work just a few minutes of planning can save a lot of your time and can make your work easier and help you complete it faster. This is because having no plan can create a huge mess which will force us to procrastinate. Now let's talk about action; How should we plan things in order to take action? For this we have to make a list as we described in the earlier principle. For now we will only make four lists;

The first list is the master list - In the master list you have to write your overarching goals and targets which you want to achieve in your life. like starting your own company or going on a world tour or getting a perfect body etc.

The second is a monthly list - In this, you have to write all the work which needs to be done in a month. Remember it should include at least one task which can help you complete one of the most important tasks from the master list.

The third is the weekly list - Unless you have to write all steps and tasks which you need to complete in a week, all the work which will help you complete your monthly goals.

The fourth is the last list- In this you have to write all the tasks which you need to finish today. Which will help you complete at least a part of your weekly goals and if you include all your household work into this list like paying your bills meeting friends etc.

Principle number 3 - The ABCDE technique

One of the ways in which we waste time is by doing something very well that didn’t need to be done at all. 'ABCDE' is a very simple and effective priority technique which ensures that we utilize our time effectively. After making the lists, the next step will be to mark every task with one of the alphabets. Mark all your important work under alphabet ‘A’ if it won't get completed, you have to face serious consequences. Mark all the tasks less important than ‘A’ as ‘B’ and if you don't complete them it will create some problems. Mark all the tasks as alphabets ‘C’ which would be good for you to complete but will not cause any problems if you don't complete them. If any tasks can be done by someone else then you should mark it as ‘D’ and any task which is useless and does not need to be completed you should mark it as ‘E’. After marking the work as for the alphabets ‘ABCDE’ then your priority will be to complete the work which is marked under ‘A’. These tasks will be like eating the Frog early in the morning. Now if there is more than one task which are marked as ‘A’ then you can divide them as ‘A1’, ‘A2’, ‘A3’ etc. Where ‘A1’ has the most priority, ‘A2’ has the lesser priority and so on.

These are some of the tips on time management and smart work. If followed strictly, they may help you reaching your goals for sure.