7 Great Tips to Make the Most of your Time

Time is a resource many of us believe we have in abundance but do not manage well.  The old adage states: “Time is money”. Whilst this not to be taken literally, it does have a strong basis in economic terms because a lot of jobs and services are valued based on the time it takes to complete or use them.

Therefore, it is imperative for anyone that wants to be more productive to manage time better. 

I will now share with you 7 tips on how to make the most of time.

1. Respect Time as a Resource

You have a finite amount of time to spend on the surface of the earth. Therefore, every second of your life is precious and very valuable. Once you assimilate this into your consciousness, you will see time in a new, purposeful way which should drive you to being better at utilising it.

2. Create a Schedule

This can be done by using a diary, your computer or phone. The reason for creating a daily, weekly or even monthly schedule is to organize your tasks and activities in an orderly manner. You should categorise them into 2 major groups based on their importance and date of completion. The most important ones and those with shortest lead times to completion should be handled first whilst others can be handled later.

3. Avoid too Much Multitasking

 

The prevailing wisdom in recent years is that great achievers are very good at multitasking. Whilst this is usually true, you should avoid taking-on too many overlapping duties. When you do too many things at the same time, you become distracted and sometimes confused without doing any particular task well. Rather than try to do everything at once, you should break the multiple tasks into little bits and do them one after the other in quick succession. You should achieve more with this methodology.

4. Use tools to help you do things at the right time

Alarms, organisers, reminders, portable storage devices, the Internet are just a few tools that you can use to help you with your tasks, saving information about them and using such information at a later date. Moreover, they save you time by helping you do things faster.

5. Rest

Work and rest are 2 things you have to master before you can optimise your usage of time. Rest helps you replenish your energy levels and ease-off accumulated stress which can prevent you from doing the required work at the right time. In addition, adequate rest helps to keep you healthy. Without good health, you can hardly achieve anything substantial because it requires so much time, effort and resources to recover from illness, a disease or negative physiological condition.

 

6. Stay Focused

Time can be wasted when you do not focus on the task at end and allow diversions which may come in different forms; other people, self-indulgence, laziness, play and others. Diversions often lead to wrong decisions which make it difficult to achieve your goals and objectives in the shortest possible time. You should do your best to avoid them.

7. Learn better ways of getting work done

Advances in technology and human knowledge mean that there are often newer and better ways of doing things than what you have now. You should always lookout for these and take advantage of them. They may require you to learn new skills like many typists with typewriters had to learn how to use a computer for word processing; the advantages of the newer technology far outweigh the cost of acquiring the new skill. New technology and developments are important if you want to optimise your time and productivity.

There you have it, are there other ways to optimise time that I have left out? Let me know by dropping a comment. I love getting feedback from my readers. I might just learn from you better ways of being productive with my time. I am handing over to you now.