Editor’s note: Oladapo Afolabi, the ZENITHBLOG.com partner blogger, explains 9 tips on how people could manage their time effectively.
Afolabi, popularly referred to as Daps, is a human resource capitalist, entrepreneur, travel consultant and a passionate writer and the owner of the blog Dapsdiary.
More details in ZENITHBLOG.com’s step-by-step guide for guest bloggers.
If you’ve created a time management plan and still failed to reach your goals, it’s likely because you’re too flexible and easy on yourself and others when it comes to the schedule. The sorry fact is that time is not limitless. You can’t get more. You can’t work harder to get more of it; it’s a finite resource that cannot be increased or replaced.
When you realize that time is finite and that there really might not be some future distant tomorrow, you might start being more ruthless with the time you’ve got.
Follow these tips to make time management so much easier:
1. Just say no
The biggest factor in being ruthless with your time is learning to say no. If you really do not want to do something, you must say no. There is no sin in saying no. The only reason you feel guilty about the word is that your mother taught you saying no was wrong. It’s time to realize that as a grown-up you can now say no. The power of your yes is in the no – if your no is weak, so likely your yes.
2. Get up on time
This is a hard one for many but it doesn’t have to be hard as you think. If you are a small business owner who works from home, it’s actually pretty easy. You do not need more than seven or eight hours of sleep a night. If you can limit your sleep to no more than eight hours, you will gain time. If you typically sleep less than six you may need to get in a bit more sleep to be most productive with your time.
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3. Try to be early
If you need to drive places or you have deadlines for work, schedule your time so that you are going to be early. The reason is that this is one of the ways to eliminate urgency from your life, which in turn causes stress and can cause problems with time management.
This way if something does happen out of the ordinary, you will still have time to meet a deadline and be on time. When I still work in the corporate world, one thing that helped me with time management was my ability to always leave early to work before traffic and I also stayed back after work to ensure traffic reduces before heading home. What this does was to optimize my time, spend my time on things that matter instead of wasting away in traffic.
4. Turn off the internet
The very thing that is supposed to make our time more productive can have the opposite effect too. The notifications of new emails, your Facebook stream, and unscheduled time on Pinterest can get out of hand. Turn it off. You’ll gain so much more time. Personally it is difficult to turn off my internet because that is work for me, what I learn to do is disable notifications. This helps me get good time without distractions.
5. Understand your internal clock
Everyone has an internal time clock. It’s important not to fight against that and be aware of what it is. Some people are early risers and some people are night owls and others are in between. It’s important for you to determine for yourself what your own internal clock is and then work with it – for me I can work all nights.
6. Make lists
7. Calendar it
Put everything in your calendar including everyday tasks, small steps for a project due in the future and time with family, friends and yourself. Don’t skip this step so that when someone asks for your time you can easily schedule them in (or not) based on your availability. I know you will probably be wondering; all my tasks? YES! That few spared minute is what makes all the difference between highly efficient people and others.
8. Avoid meetings
Some meetings are important, such as a first client meeting to establish goals and determine tactics, but after that almost everything else can be accomplished through updates in a project management system. There is no real need for weekly meetings for updates, or to discuss anything that can easily be put into a memo.
9. Touch “it” only once
Another way to be ruthless with your time is to not allow yourself to wait to do things later. If you get an email that requires a response, do it now. If you check your snail mail and a bill needs to be paid, schedule it now. If you get junk mail, delete it now. Only check your mail when you have time to deal with these issues.
Finally, don’t be too hard on yourself in terms of the hours you schedule yourself to work. Yes, be ruthless about the schedule, but also schedule in fun time. Humans aren’t designed to work 20 hours a day.
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Go ahead, schedule 8 to 10 hours a day of work. But, in between, schedule in breaks. Time with friends, family and spouses during any given work day is important too. Also, remember to schedule in breaks like weekends and vacations. If you do that, it’ll be so much easier to be ruthless with time and stick to your schedule normally.
I recommend a video on my VLOG – 3 Tips to be More Productive at Work. If you find this useful, like and share, you can also drop a comment below. I love, I care.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the editorial policy of ZENITHBLOG.com.
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