Hi Taylor - Got any time management tips? I’m a little tired of hearing people say “time is money” and “we all have the same number of hours in our days.” I know those things to be true, but I don’t know what I can do about it to be more efficient. - Yolanda
Hey Yolanda - I know how frustrating it is when people offer platitudes instead of solutions, so I’ll try to give you concrete advice on this. Time definitely equals money when you’re handling your schedule effectively, and I’ve found these tips to be really useful.
Identify your procrastination techniques. A lot of people procrastinate nonstop without realizing what they’re doing. Do you check your email a dozen times a day, or spend hours reorganizing your workspace because you think that will help you clear your head? We all do plenty of things that are more productive than scrolling through social media, but still far less productive than just getting to work. Take some time to analyze the things you do, then be honest with yourself about how important those tasks are. I guarantee there are at least a couple of routine activities that could be eliminated from your daily itinerary.
Don’t multitask for the sake of multitasking. If you can truly multitask, you have a gift. In most cases, people who claim to be multitasking are just spreading effort between two separate chores. Doing two things at once doesn’t save you any time if you have to repeat the process later because your work wasn’t good enough the first time. When you give a task your full attention, you’ll finish it more quickly. Keep that in mind before you try to do a bunch of important things at once.
Delegate. You have 24 hours in your day. That’s the way time works, and there’s no way around it. Or is there? Here’s the thing: while you only have 24 hours in your day, Bob also has 24 hours in his. If Bob is able to spend one of his hours doing an hour of your work, you’ve essentially just tacked on a 25th hour. The hardest part of delegating is getting past the need to feel self-sufficient. You have to realize that the busiest people who get the most stuff done spend a lot of time delegating tasks. You don’t want to push your luck and put too much on someone else’s plate, but asking for help isn’t a bad idea. More often than not, people will do what they can to make your life a little easier.
There are a lot of time management techniques worth employing, and these three should show pretty immediate results. Identify the areas you could improve, make some changes, and you’ll start to feel like time isn’t always fleeting. Best of luck!
