A workable schedule for productivity. Those are all excellent words but strung together in a sentence, they could sound more like an insurmountable goal. But wait – I’m here to help!

Creating a Workable Schedule for Productivity & Sticking to It

Creating and following a schedule is the best way to use all of your time as efficiently as possible. Working on a schedule helps you meet deadlines, keep appointments and stay focused on the task at hand. But, following a schedule can be difficult – especially if you aren’t used to planning out your day. Here are some things to keep in mind while making and maintaining your schedule.

Make a To-Do List

The first thing to consider when setting up a schedule is knowing what you need to accomplish. Make a list of everything that you need to get done in a day, as well as a list of leisure activities or other things that you would like to do. Once you’ve made your lists, you can decide how much time you need for each activity and use this to develop a schedule. Schedule high-priority activities first and work everything else in around them.

Use a Planner

Record all of your scheduled events in one organizational tool like a planner. You can use a physical copy or an app on your phone, but it’s important to use the same planner for all your scheduling. This ensures that all of your appointments and meetings will be in the same place and easily accessible, and that no conflicting schedules are made. The simplified scheduling will keep you on track and relieve some of the stress associated with the scheduling process.

Stay Realistic

Don’t plan out a schedule that you won’t be able to keep. Be sure to give yourself plenty of time in between activities, especially if you have to travel from one to the other. Also, make sure you allow yourself breaks throughout the day to rest and recharge. Planning a schedule that is too busy will leave you feeling tired, and may affect your performance as well as your health.

Keep At It

Like any habit, good or bad, you have to keep at it in order to truly make it stick. The same applies to learning how to properly manage and maintain a workable schedule that you can consistently follow each day. The scheduling process will be less stressful and easier to follow through with each time you plan out your day. Persistence is key!

Expect the Unexpected

More often than not, things don’t quite go according to plan. Don’t be stressed out if things don’t happen exactly like you were expecting them to. Be prepared to make adjustments to your schedule if the situation calls for it. If something comes up that you hadn’t scheduled for, make sure you will still have time to see to everything on your schedule.

These tips cover the basics of managing your time. After you’ve worked out and followed your own schedule, you can adapt your organizational style to suit your needs. Try out different methods or techniques to see which ones you like. There is no perfect method for scheduling, so you have to find the method that works best for you.

Scheduling Methods for More Productivity

It may be helpful to think of time like money; if you spend time on things that are not important or useful, it’s just like spending money on things that you don’t want or need. However, unlike cash, you will never get more time.

Sound time management methods can help you become more productive. These methods may include enabling you to plan your time more wisely. This, in turn, helps you keep track of how much time is available per task, what needs to be accomplished, and what needs to be completed by a specific time.

From this perspective, scheduling is considered a form of time management because it allocates specific time slots for specific tasks, instead of generalizing a block of time. To schedule your day for maximum productivity, follow the suggestions below:

Define Your Why

First, define your purpose for the time you want to schedule. For example, is it so you can complete a project by a specific date? Is it so you can do laundry every other day instead of once per week? Defining why you are scheduling time will keep you focused on how important it is to be productive and avoid distractions.

Set Goals

Set specific goals and time limits for each task. Start by writing down all major tasks that need to be completed. Then determine how much time you need for each task, based on what needs to be done. Consider how long it takes to complete in an average situation. Next, break up your time into 30-minute blocks of time.

Schedule Everything towards Productivity

Schedule your time accordingly, so you can complete each task with time left over to take breaks and related activities. If you want to be extra productive, take an incremental approach by creating a daily schedule and using time blocks to ensure that you allow enough time to complete your morning routines and chores.

Make Adjustments

If time was allotted for a task, but you find it’s not working out for you, make adjustments to your schedule until it aligns with the daily schedule needs. If the desired plan cannot be achieved, tasks will need to be prioritized. Consider using the Eisenhower Method to prioritize your schedule.

A workable schedule focused on productivity ensures you can complete your most important tasks each day. In addition, it keeps you on track by ensuring you’ve planned enough time and didn’t over-schedule per task. As you use the schedule, you learn what you can be outsource, automate, or delete from your schedule entirely, since it has no impact on your tracking.

Sometimes we don’t even realize our current mindset, let alone know how to evolve a new one. But evolving your mindset isn’t an insurmountable task – it just takes awareness and small diligent steps.

The Realities of Living with a Fixed Mindset

Imagine knowing, beyond any doubt, that there was nothing you could do to improve yourself. Your intelligence level and the very things your parents and teachers complimented you on years ago would remain fixed throughout your life. While this is an impossible reality for most people, many live with fixed mindsets about certain qualities they believe they cannot change.

People who believe their character traits are fixed and can’t be changed have a fixed mindset. For example, if someone thinks they are unlovable, they may develop into a pattern of self-sabotage. They may take actions in relationships that drive people away. This is because the fixed mindset believes that lovable qualities cannot be acquired.

People who believe their intelligence is fixed and they cannot improve upon it have a fixed mindset. When the person fails at something, they see it as proof that they aren’t smart. They feel that if they can’t do something well, there’s no point in even trying.

According to the data, fixed mindsets are often developed in childhood due to trauma and sometimes due to simply misunderstanding the importance of your experiences compared to how most people interpret them.

If you have a fixed mindset, you must develop a growth mindset. A growth mindset says that your character traits, intelligence level, and abilities are not set. Instead, they can be developed over time with work, effort, and dedication. You can develop a growth mindset by following the three steps below:

1. Recognize your fixed mindset triggers.

As you begin to recognize the fixed mindset thoughts running through your head, you can start to separate fixed mindset thoughts from growth mindset thoughts.

2. Reframe fixed mindset triggers in order to evolve your mindset.

Whenever you begin to have fixed-mindset thoughts, reframe those fixed-mindset thoughts as a challenge that can be overcome with hard work and effort instead of a fixed reality about the situation. For example, if someone has a fixed mindset about money, they might think it takes hundreds of thousands of dollars to be happy. When they come up against their fixed mindset beliefs, they can reframe those fixed-mindset thoughts as challenges inviting them to go out and earn more money.

3. Stop comparing yourself to others.

People with fixed mindsets not only compare themselves to others, but they often only compare the best qualities of their fixed mindset to others’ fixed or growth mindsets. So, for example, somebody with a fixed mindset about weight may constantly compare their weight to other people’s weights. As a result, the issue may cause them to ignore how much money they’re eating, causing the weight problem, instead of tackling the matter knowing that they have the power to do it.

The downside of having a fixed mindset is that it leaves you believing that your abilities are set and cannot be overcome with hard work. Evolving your mindset means you have to step byeond your fixed mindset. The good news is that you don’t need to live with a fixed mindset. The data is overwhelming that you can improve yourself. You can learn and grow and develop into a person with a growth mindset if you follow the three tips above.

Evolving Your Mindset by Rewriting The Story You Tell Yourself

Negative biases and negative thinking affect how you talk to yourself and how you manage your life. If you are working towards evolving your mindset, you can change your story by changing negative thoughts into positive ones. Negative frameworks, negative filters, and negative bias cause negative thinking. When you get in the habit of negative thinking, it leads to negative outcomes.

Changing your story to end the negativity can improve your quality of life. If negative thoughts are not changed, negative feelings and negative thinking will continue. But if they are changed, you will experience a happier, more contented life. To rewrite your story, take the following steps:

Identify negative thoughts – Write them down or acknowledge them as they happen but do not react to them. Becoming emotionally resilient doesn’t mean that you need to stuff your feelings. Of course, you can have negative emotions, but you want to learn to act mindfully and proactively instead of reacting without thought.

Examine your negative thinking – Discover why you are thinking this way and whether there is a better way to look at the situation. What happened in your life made you think this? Do you have limiting beliefs you need to address?

Recognize your negative biases – What or who made you believe this? Can you see the other side of the bias? Try proving yourself wrong. It can be tough to accept the things that happen to you may subjective and not always indicative of the world, and statistics may surprise you.

Change negative thinking to positive thinking – Once you note the negative thought, understand why you had it, and prove it wrong, you can quickly turn it into a positive or neutral thought. Even if you verify the idea is true, it doesn’t mean you have to look at it with hostile intentions. You can instead accept it and figure out a way around it.

Write down your positive or neutral changes – Once you transform the negative into a neutral or positive change, write it down so you can access it quickly when you need it.

Keep a gratitude journal – As you rewrite your story, take time to focus on your gratitude. You want to focus on the positives in your life to help you increase your positive thoughts, as well as acknowledge the kind things people say to you and do for you.

To start rewriting your story, journal your negative thoughts that occur in your everyday life so you can examine them and re-frame them into positive ones. If negative thoughts continue to appear in your daily life, consider seeking professional help from a life coach or counselor.

Once you change your negative thoughts into positive thoughts, talk to yourself about it. Self-talk is effective because your mind will hear what you’re saying and believe it. If negative words or phrases pop into your head, stop. Recognize them and switch them to positive thought or phrase. Rewrite negative thoughts through positive self-talk until positive thinking becomes a habit.

How is it possible that the holidays are almost upon us? While the to-do list grows exponentially, sometimes our productivity can diminish. But instead of letting the list overwhelm you, focusing on mindfulness for productivity can actually help. Not only can your productivity improve, but with a focus on mindfulness, your enjoyment of the holidays can also come back.

How to Stay Happy With Mindfulness for Productivity

Often times, a person will become frustrated with a project that seems to be going
nowhere. They are fearful that if they stop the project, they will lose all of the effort and
energy that was put into it. This is not an efficient way to get things done. If the person
would step back, take some deep breaths, and consider the end product, it would help
the project reach fruition. This is using mindfulness to help fulfill a task. Mindfulness is
simply being aware of what is going on around you and putting oneself in the present
moment in order to focus and get things accomplished.

Understanding Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the component that helps a person be more efficient, and more
productive. It consists of making the best possible decisions, and being able to think
rationally. It also is the process of being creative, and positive engagement with other
employees. All of this has an impact on task completion and the efficiency of the work
involved. Mindfulness also helps to increase the person’s mood by helping to get rid of
negative thoughts, and replacing those with a more pleasing thought pattern. The mood
during a task is very important as it can lead to the success of failure of a project.
Always being mindful and aware of how things are perceived in the moment will ensure
happiness and productivity.

Benefits of Meditation

Meditation is a good form of relaxation, and the perfect setting for mindfulness. This
helps with the promotion of creativity, and to improve cognitive thinking. Basing
productivity on these two elements are exactly what mindfulness produces. By using
mindfulness practices regularly will greatly enhance decision making skills, and the
production of new and better ideas. People will begin to be more confident in
themselves, and make sound investments in the future of a business or entity that they
are focused on. Meditation is an effective and powerful tool for mindfulness because of
better, more positive creativity. It can change the way a person thinks, and how they
experience certain events.

Mindfulness, when practiced by leaders, can make for a more productive workplace. It
will improve employer and employee relationships which will increase business
revenue. Mindfulness will enable a person to single task, which is the opposite of multi-
task. They will concentrate and focus on doing one thing to perfection before starting on
another. Mindfulness allows the mind, sensations, and feelings to flow so that many
things can be observed before becoming assigned to anyone.

How to Live More Intentionally for Better Productivity

It’s all too easy to drift mindlessly through the day. Between external pressures and constant distractions, many of us never pause to reconsider how we spend our time. But even if living intentionally doesn’t come naturally to you, it’s well worth the effort to make it a habit. Here’s why. Living intentionally means consciously deciding what to do with your time. It’s easy to get trapped in a constant cycle of reacting to outside events, but living this way can leave you feeling frustrated, unfulfilled, and unproductive. Living intentionally lets you take back control over your time and
attention.

It’s not easy to stay productive when you’re feeling distracted, harried, or anxious. But when you practice living with intention, your focus stays intact, no matter how busy you are. Choosing what to do with each hour helps you feel less stressed while making the most of your time at work and at home.

1.Take Time to Center Yourself Regularly

If you notice that you’re feeling scattered or frazzled, stop what you’re doing for a second. Take a few deep breaths and turn your attention to the present moment. Ask yourself, “What do I need to be focusing on right now?” Give that one thing all of your attention, keeping your mind in the present.

2.Focus on Your Health

Your health makes a big impact on your overall well-being and productivity, so make a conscious decision to prioritize it. Eat well, get enough sleep, and get some exercise every day. Even small lifestyle changes can make a difference in your mood and energy levels.

3.Rethink Your Habits

Do you spend a lot of time on Netflix, social media, or video games? Most of us have some mindless habits that can eat up a lot of time. In moderation, it’s okay to enjoy these activities. But if you aren’t happy with how much time you lose to these mindless habits, it might be time to cut back. Decide how much time you’re willing to spend on these activities every day, and set a timer to remind yourself when it’s time to stop.

4.Allocate Your Time Wisely

We all get twenty-four hours every day, but if you use your time well, it can feel like much more. Take a few minutes every morning to decide what you want to accomplish and when. Making a to-do list can help keep you on track. This simple tip can increase your everyday productivity dramatically.

If you want to make the most of your time, living intentionally is a must. Make a habit of being intentional with your time and attention, and you’ll become happier, more productive, and more mindful.

Do you know how to develop personal freedom? Freedom in your life to live the life you want?

You might be surprised to learn that the biggest obstacle to your personal freedom is right between your ears. A negative mindset is the biggest block to freedom.

There are so many parts of your life you cannot control, from the need to earn a living to finding true love. But you can control your mindset, your thoughts, and how you act in the world. So how can you overcome your psychological blocks and open your mind to achieve greater freedom?

To Develop Personal Freedom, Start In Your Mind

• Change the record

Everyone has a constant inner monologue; what psychologists call self-talk. And most of the time, yours is probably set to negative. Any messages you get in childhood about being bad, hopeless or selfish or stupid all get absorbed in your malleable child’s brain and resurface in adulthood as your Inner Critic.

The good news is that you can reprogram your Inner Critic and turn it into an Inner Coach.

Make a list of all the negative things your Inner Critic says. Be alert for phrases that start ‘you always or ‘you never.’ Watch out for ‘shoulds’ too. Then take each negative message and turn into a positive one.

To truly develop personal freedom, change your self-talk broken record to a new track full of encouragement and positivity.

• Change your expectations

Studies have shown that the most significant contributors to success or failure are your expectations. Happy people expect things to go well and mistakes or problems do not crush them, they see them only as temporary setbacks. Conversely, if the expectation is to fail any issue will confirm the expectations, and you won’t try again.

Expecting things to work out is not wishful thinking; it is choosing to be positive no matter what the circumstances.

• Change your focus

Modern society trains us to be dissatisfied with what we have now and constantly strive for bigger, better and shiner. You can choose to step outside of this and be grateful for what you have right now.

Developing a habit of gratitude frees you from this pressure and affects the structure of your brain. Studies show that the more you feel grateful, the more resilient you become in the face of life’s ups and downs. You feel happier with what you have and more open to receiving. Even better, you rewire the neural pathways in your brain so that your mindset defaults to positivity. You start to see the good things before you notice the bad. Over time, you perceive life as positive, and your expectations change. You free yourself from the burden of negativity!

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How to Be More Grateful for What Freedom You Already Have

There‘s so much emphasis on getting ahead, being successful and striving for change that it can be hard to remember that you already have so much for which to be grateful. Even worse, the constant pushing to change your circumstances can lead to dissatisfaction, and keep you trapped in a cycle of always feeling you’re not good enough.

Free yourself from the shackles of ‘must try harder’ by remembering to stop and appreciate what you’ve already achieved, what blessings you already have in your life. Keep in mind that you are free to be content right now. Here are some tips to help free you from the cycle of discontent.

• Change your focus

Research has shown that the more you cultivate a habit of gratitude, the better able you are to weather the ups and downs of life. As you perceive life to be positive, you will come to expect more of the same. You can retrain your brain from negative self-talk to greater thankfulness, gratitude, and happiness.

By practicing gratitude, you rewire the neural pathways in your brain so that it becomes your mindset’s default setting. You learn to look for the good in things instead of focusing on the bad.

• Step away from more stuff

If you’re like most people, you have more than enough possessions. The current mantra is that spending brings happiness, but deep down you probably know that it doesn’t. Sure, buying yourself a new car or outfit makes you feel good at the time, but that spenders high wears off pretty quickly.

Break the habit of buying the next shiny thing and appreciate what you’ve got right now.

• Develop a mindfulness practice

Mindfulness and meditation can help you focus on the good that’s already in your life. By focusing on the present, you free yourself from that familiar yoyo-ing of brooding over past disappointments and future anxieties.

You can easily integrate mindfulness into your day. Whatever you’re doing, pause and focus on your breath. Ask yourself: what are five things I’m grateful for in my life right now? Your five items can be anything from having a roof over your head to having a job, your partner or your health. Or you can be grateful for a comfortable chair or clean sheets! Chose anything that makes you feel good at that very moment.

Choosing gratitude and contentment doesn’t mean being stagnant or giving up. It means stepping aside from judgment and freeing yourself from the bonds of negativity.

Do you ever get to the end of the day and say “What happened? Where did my time go?” Sometimes the time just gets away from us. Have you been saying to yourself “I want to learn how to manage my time productively”? Then you’ve come to the right place!

How to Stay Productive Throughout the Day

Are you someone who is productive during very short periods of time in the morning, but the rest of the day you tend to procrastinate and waste time? This is a very common occurrence for most people, but there are some ways to be a little more productive late in the morning until the afternoon.

Try Time Blocking

Time blocking is a great way to stay productive throughout the day, since you are managing how you spend your time and can stay on track. This method involves using different blocks of time between 1 and 3 hours on average, where you dedicate that time to one type of task.

The time period will vary based on your schedule and the task, but might look like:

• 6-6:30am – morning routine
• 6:30am-8:30am – marketing and social media
• 8:30-9am – breakfast break
• 9am-12pm – working on your blog

You can choose different parts of your day to work on different things, and balance it out between work and personal tasks. You’ll learn how to manage your time as productively as possible.

Batch Your Projects

This doesn’t mean multi-tasking and working on multiple things at one time. Instead, you want to use the work batching method, which means you do the same type of task in one batch. For example, if you have a YouTube channel, you might record multiple videos all in one long session. If you run a website for your business, you might brainstorm and research the next week’s worth of posts all in one sitting, then tomorrow, batch all the writing to be done together.

Choose When to Check Your Email

Having your email notifications open all day will steal your focus consistently, and make it really hard to stay productive. Every time you see that a new email has arrived, you are tempted to read it and possibly even respond. Don’t allow the distractions to drive how you manage your time productively.

Instead of having it open, close your email and have dedicated times during the day when you read and respond to emails. This can fit into your time blocking schedule, or just when you have free time to do so.

Go for a Walk During Your Afternoon Slump

Everyone has a slump in their day, usually around the early afternoon. This is when you tend to lose a lot of your energy and need a little pick-me-up. Instead of hitting the vending machine, consider going outside and taking a walk instead.

Plan Activities Around Your Energy Levels

It is also a good idea to be aware of when you have high or low energy during the day. During your peak work hours is of course when you should get the productive work done, especially the tasks that require a little more brain power. Then during times of the day when your energy is lower, work on answering emails, updating your website, or doing smaller tasks that don’t require as much energy.

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How Being Organized Saves You Time and Money

In order to manage your time productively, you have to be able to manage your own schedule. We all want to be able to organize our schedules and have the commitment to maintain them on a day-to-day basis, but how? Creating a workable schedule is typically time-consuming and often results in a frustrating battle with your calendar.

Organization is beneficial for everyone and can be easily adapted to suit individual needs. And believe it or not, being organized in your everyday life actually saves you time and money. Here are a few of the reasons why.

Efficient and Stress-Free

If you keep your belongings organized, you don’t need to spend time looking for them when needed. This is especially handy in the case of important yet rarely used items, such as insurance or tax information.

The key to keeping things organized is to come up with a place to keep something and stick to it. If you want to keep important mail in a desk drawer, make sure you keep all of your important mail in that drawer. Don’t be afraid of sorting your things too much. The more categories of things you come up with, the easier it will be to find exactly what you need when you need it. You’re learning to manage your time productively!

Saves You from Buying New

Organization keeps you from buying items you already have, but you’ve forgotten about or lost in your household or workplace. You’re more likely to forget about a pack of rubber bands you bought several months ago and never opened, than your car keys or your wallet. Combined, these types of purchases can end up costing you a significant amount of money for items that you already have.

Fortunately, this is a very fixable problem. By cleaning and organizing the designated “junk” drawers in your home or office and making a list of all the items, you will easily find the item you’re looking for the next time you go searching. This avoids unnecessary purchases and impulsive buys at the store in the future. It’s a very flexible habit that can be applied to many aspects of your daily routine.

Helps You Remember Important Details

It can be hard to keep track of every detail when you have a lot going on in your life. Sometimes, bills can get lost in the shuffle and go unpaid, or household maintenance gets overlooked. By keeping all of your activities organized, you can get them done in a more efficient manner and you make sure that every detail is taken care of.

Saves Money on Shopping

If you plan out a menu for each month, you can buy many of your groceries in bulk, saving you time and frequent trips to the store. If you prepare a list ahead of time, you can also look for coupons that offer savings on the things you plan to buy.

The same applies to non-food items, which can be bought in bulk and stored for later use. Staying organized and keeping essentials stocked up saves you the stress of running out to make a special trip for more. You can also plan out birthday or holiday gifts well ahead of time, so that you can keep an eye out for a good deal.

While it may take a bit of effort, organizing your life allows you to use your time more efficiently and to take full advantage of your finances. Not only that, but the more thought-out your budget or schedule is, the less you will worry about them. Planning ahead ultimately helps you manage your time more productively.

Surprising Time Management Secrets

One certainty in life is that time is limited. While no one is sure how many years they’ll be given to finish doing what they want to do, everything is equal for each day you are given. Everyone has the same 24-hour day to dream, determine goals, and complete tasks that will help them meet those goals. But doesn’t it seem like some people are just better at time management than others? Surprisingly, there are some time management secrets that make you feel like you have hours more in your day.

Set Priorities – There are really only four choices:

1. Most important
2. Most urgent
3. Least important
4. Least urgent

When you identify tasks and set your priorities carefully by what is important over not important, as well as avoid having issues of urgency each day, you can get a handle on how to manage your time productively, in ways that you never thought possible.

• Learn the Power of No – Saying no is probably one of the most important things you’ll ever learn to say. The problem is our parents disciplined the word “no” from our vocabulary. It’s time to learn how to say no again. If something is not right for you, is too “urgent”, causes you stress, or you just do not want to do it and it doesn’t fit in with meeting your goals, say no. Saying no will free up untold amounts of time to focus on your priorities.
• Disconnect from Technology – Unplug the phone, turn off email notifications, and for goodness sakes get off Facebook. If you’ve not completed the most important tasks on your daily list, you have no business messing around with technology. The idea of multitasking is overrated, so unplug and tune in to the tasks at hand. You’ll work faster, smarter, and gain the time you need for other things.
• Schedule Everything – Your priorities need to be added to your calendar. Everything from the 15 minutes you need to use social media for marketing purposes, to the one hour you take your kids to the park, needs to be put into your calendar. If you have a project due in a week, you should have five days of scheduled time to work on the project prior to the due date. This helps avoid those urgencies mentioned earlier.
• Ignore Interruptions – Unless the house is on fire or a child is bleeding, the telephone ringing and the knocks on your office door are not important. They are interruptions. Check your email at scheduled times during the day, explain to your children, spouse and family when you are working, and otherwise ignore the door bell ringing. If you didn’t schedule it, you don’t need it.
• Outsource – Whether it’s the housework, cooking, or customer service, it’s important to outsource what you can afford to outsource. There are huge payoffs to outsourcing the things that are simply time suckers from your day. If you can’t afford to outsource, your kitchen will not explode if a few dishes pile up, and everyone can do with eating a salad for dinner. And, you can automate a lot of customer service issues if you work from home.
• Once and You’re Done – Multitasking is not really a bastion of efficiency. Instead, seek to touch each task only once and finish it. For example, when you check the mail immediately throw out the trash, schedule bills to be paid, and deal with any issues that came up with a letter – right then. Of course, your mail time should be scheduled as well so that you can stay on track.
• Check Your Schedule – At least twice a day, set out the time to check your schedule. Usually the morning is good and at the end of the day is good. Ensure that you have your priorities in order, add anything new to your schedule that needs to be added, and remind yourself of what is expected the next day. Checking your schedule helps you feel accomplished at the end of the day, and reminds you of what’s coming up tomorrow.

Finally, it’s important to be very serious about following your schedule and calendar. Use technology to help such as Google Calendar or Outlook, synced to your smartphone to help you remember what it is that you should be doing now, and next. It may seem geeky to be so serious about a schedule, but it’s this one factor that makes these surprising time management tips work.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the priorities for managing your time?

Setting Priorities for Managing Your Time

One of the hardest parts of time management is learning how to set priorities. Sometimes it can feel like every last thing you need to do is an emergency. But the truth is, there are ways to organize your time and manage the tasks that you need to do so that you get them finished right when they need to be done without feeling overwhelmed or rushed.

1. Needs to be done immediately
2. Needs to be done but can take longer and needs more strategic planning
3. Distractions, but needed by others
4. Not at all important and often used in order to procrastinate

Use the grid to help create your daily to-do list by prioritizing the importance and urgency of each item you have to pick from. It can be as simple as doing the purple things first, then the green, next pink, and finally the light green items. But, if you do it this way you might miss out on something important you can learn from the time management grid.

How does this help me manage my time productively? When you are assessing any task, make sure you label it, then ask yourself if it fits in with your core values and goals. As you learn to use this system it will start becoming more automatic so that you can say yes or no faster and put your time management on auto drive.

What about planning for better time management?

Creating a time management plan keeps you from wasting time. Having a plan makes every hour count, ensures that you get to work more quickly and helps distribute your time over all the tasks that you need to do each day, week, month and year. Creating a time management plan is an imperative if you want to be successful.

• Be Realistic With Your Plans – Don’t go against your own internal clock when planning each day. If you know you struggle to get up in the morning, do not schedule things in the early morning hours. If you can manage in the mornings if you do tasks you like first, try that.
• Set Time Limits – This is especially important for both tasks you dislike and tasks you like. You always have a risk of procrastination when it comes to tasks you hate by spending too much time on tasks you like.
• Eliminate Distractions – One of the biggest killers of any plan that you set are distractions. While nothing is ever perfect, you can eliminate most distractions by planning ahead about how to deal with them.
• Differentiate Important from Non-Important Tasks – One of the hardest tasks when creating a time management plan is understanding what is important and what is not. If you make it a habit to do the most important things first, you’re going to feel more accomplished.
• Use a Calendar and Technology – Where would we be without technology? Using a system synced to your phone is a great way to ensure that your calendar is always with you and that you don’t forget things. You can even set reminders and alarms to help.
• Eliminate Urgency from Your Life – This can be difficult but most things really aren’t urgent. If you are a service provider, stop taking last-minute work; train your clients to give you plenty of time to work tasks into your schedule. If you set family time and play time into your schedule too, that will eliminate the need for a last-minute meltdown from the toddler too.
• Create and Use Lists – It is one thing to note on your calendar “work on project A” but it’s quite another to list exactly what you are to do during that time period on project A. This is the most effective way to schedule your time. Be very specific with lists so that no time is wasted.
• Create a Daily Action Plan – There should always be at least four or five things that you can do each day toward any future goal that you have to help you feel accomplished. Plus, having a variety of things to do each day will eliminate boredom and procrastination.

What are the best tips for time management for better productivity?

Stop doing everything yourself. That’s certainly not how to manage your time productively! Outsource your work before it’s too late. To be successful, you need to save your time and energy for what you do best. If accounting, customer service, marketing, or technology isn’t your thing outsourcing the work by finding an online freelancer is a great option to save you more time and frustration.

The following are a few areas to outsource in your life and business to save you more time:

• Making hotel reservations or booking meetings and other appointments.
• Social media, email, and other marketing projects and tasks.
• Laundry, cleaning, and other housework or maintenance.
• Content writing, administrative or human resource tasks such as payroll.
• Customer service and support.
• Shopping and dry cleaning.
• Other repetitive, time-consuming, and frustrating tasks.

What to outsource depends on what you need the most, what you can afford, and what goals you are looking to accomplish. Ask yourself this one simple question to get started: “What takes up most of my time?” Then decide from there if it something someone else could be doing for you instead.

Depending on your needs, there are many different platforms to choose from online to hire independent contractors to do various tasks from content writing, social media marketing, answering phone calls from customers, sending out emails on your behalf, or even delivering your groceries other materials.