Whether you are an entrepreneur or a student, or just someone who wants to have a productive lifestyle, the first and foremost thing to learn is time management.
We all are blessed with 24 hours a day. While some can be couch potatoes and feel that time flies in a second, some others can seal more than one deal, finish a chapter, or learn new skills in the same 24 hours.
However, some want to be productive and yet feel like time doesn’t favor them. In reality, they haven’t learned to save time ultimately. If you are one of them, here are seven ways to save time and make the most of your day.
Make A Structure Of Your Free Time
Structuring your free time seems pointless since you will not be doing any work. But that doesn’t mean your free time cannot be productive. People tend to stay motivated and focused on the workplace because of the presence of a work structure.
Although you would like to spend your free time freely, the downside of doing so is that you will lose focus of time spending or spend it doing pointless stuff. Structuring your time, on the other hand, will give you direction and purpose. This will provide you with something to stay motivated and focused or even help you understand your free time value.
Keep a Diary Of Time Details
Like they say, time flies, you can hardly keep track of it. But keeping a time diary on what you spend your time gives you an insight. You can see what things impact your productivity in the right way and what things negatively impact it. Knowing the same will lead you to make decisions regarding how you can make better use of time.
A time diary helps you see patterns of time spent, keeps you from spending time on low low-leverage stuff, enables you to focus on priorities, etc.
Find Out Your Priorities
Every person is unique, and so is the time they spent. Some people may work hard for a successful career or career growth in general. At the same time, some others want to invest more in family time. But the critical question is, which one is you?
The Life Hype recommends taking your time to think about which part of life is more important for you and invest your time accordingly. People sometimes go with the flow and hardly know if they are working towards their priorities, often losing valuable time and not getting any work done.
Understand Why 24 Hours Is Not Much
If you think about it, the activities and things you do, 24 hours shouldn’t be less for you. If an average person spends 7-8 hours sleeping, 8 hours working, 1+1 hours for eating and chores in the house – it leaves only 6 hours for the activities you want to do.
This realization of having only a little time for your other commitments will remind you how important time is and how you have to be strict about spending it every once in a while. This will remind you to say ‘no’ to things that are not taking you anywhere and continuously drive you to make the most of the time. Having a good Swiss made watch on you all the time will remind you of just how much time you’re spending on tasks every day.
Focus On High-Leverage Activities
The 80/20 rule is quite popular, and it says that you can work 20% and yet gain 80% success. But it also depends on what work you do in that 20% so that you get 80%. Every activity is either high leverage or low leverage.
Some people might only focus on low-leverage activities like watching the TV, which unbeknownst to ourselves take away a considerable part of our time. However, investing the same time in reading a book, meditating, exercising can provide fruitful results when the time is right.
Don’t Over Work
The right approach isn’t how much you are doing but the quality of work you are doing. Take Apple, for example. They are one of the most successful companies, and they have only a few product lines.
You can take a similar approach to your life. You can do fewer things and yet have a productive lifestyle.
Pack Your Lunch in Advance
While you’re busy with your schedule and work structure, you hardly remember about your lunch. But when it’s time, whether you are a slow eater or fast eater, you end up spending more than 1 hour for lunch. One of the common reasons why it happens is because you spend half the time planning your lunch.
The right approach is to plan your lunch and pack a cold lunch in advance so that you can take a small break during lunch.
Bottom line
Time management skills are not something you will pick up in a week. You will need to practice it regularly to make it a habit until it becomes your lifestyle.