[dropcap]A[/dropcap]s time passes you never feel like you complete anything. You think chasing your tail would be a better use of your time. Projects always go unfinished, new ones always surface and the daily to-do list is driving you mad.
It’s a quantum leap from one task to the next. From one chore to the other.
Your time is precious. You understand this.
It’s never about how much you do, but it’s always about what you do. You focus your efforts on the monotony, the chaos, the unimportant. Not because you want to, but because your time management skills are poor.
By the end of the day you're mentally exhausted and have nothing to show for it. Your stress has been slowly rising and now it’s got you damn right miserable.
You can stop this by taking small, yet effective time management strategies.
Think less, do more
You’re so use to beating yourself up over what you have to get done, that you never get anything done. You play hot potato with your life.
What are your goals, dreams and desires?
Don’t let the day-to-day junk keep getting in your way.
Get focused!
The less you think the more you gain. And we can both be honest, you’ve been thinking too much on the unimportant.
Keep track of your priorities
You’re working hard on a project and a thought enters your mind.
You’re tail begins to wag and you chase the bone.
Drop the bone and focus. Once you begin to chase the bone you get pulled away from what's important. Chasing the bone is what you use to do, right?
This mentally wears you out.
If you have important priorities block off a specific time to work just on that.
No phone calls, appointments, nothing. Just you and what you have to get done. This will allow you to focus and keep your mind fresh.
To keep track of your priorities use a time management software such as Nozbe. It helps you to more and less thinking.
Only focus on 3 goals per day
The more you have clogged up in your head the less you're going to get done.
Only focus on 3 goals per day.
If you have a client meeting, joint venture opportunity and a new product release, focus on tasks that will help you accomplish these goals.
Each goal is important and profit generating.
Being bothered by bookkeeping, inventory or sweeping the floor only adds to your mental clutter and pulls you away from the lucrative activities. The activities that will grow your business.
Keeping your projects and tasks organized within Nozbe is a great time management strategy. You can see what’s important, when it needs to be done and everything that has to get done to accomplish it.
Think less, do more.
Inbox your thoughts and ideas
It’s never a good idea to let your mind wander on its own.
Especially if you're me.
While in the shower I’ve thought of thousands of ideas. By the time I get out of the shower a new thought enters and the old one is gone (not recommending you shower with your phone).
My point is, write your thoughts and ideas down.
Once they're written you have 5 options:
- Do: Take action now.
- Delegate: Give it to someone else.
- Defer: Put it in a project within Nozbe, action list, or calendar.
- Delete: Throw it in the trash.
- File: Save it in something such as Evernote.
If it’s something task related, enter it into your task management inbox. Nozbe has an inbox built-in.
If it’s an idea you thought of, write it down in your idea bank. I created a notebook in Evernote just for this.
The key is to get things out of your head and on paper (so to speak).
It’s great to have ideas but if you can’t remember them then who is that serving?
Focus your time management on the non-urgent but important tasks
The best use of your time is by focusing on important, non-urgent tasks.
Let’s say you have a product launching in a month. Right now it’s not urgent but it’s important. Now compare this to your colleague running into your office screaming. She’s so frantic that her printer is jammed and the world is going to end.
One is profit generating, one is damn right annoying.
You will never completely avoid urgent, non-important (opposite of what you should be focusing on) tasks. Minimizing them, while maximizing the other is key.
Focusing on your time management skills is acquired through practice. Some things will seem foreign at first.
Fight the urge to do repetitive, monotonous, day-to-day tasks and avoid unimportant / urgent issues like the plague.
Let a software program like Nozbe do the basic thinking and prioritizing for you.
Generate ideas, think less, do more and become a saner you. [TWEET THIS]
What are your 3 biggest time management issues? Comment below.
