Everyday Time Management Strategies
One of the easiest time management strategies to implement is to make time management an automatic part of you everyday life. Everyone knows that little things add up. Adding a few extra calories a day to your diet can add up to a few pounds of weight gain a year. Adding a flight of stairs or a short walk a day to your routine can burn those pounds off. And spending a few minutes a day on time management will make you more organized and help you achieve your goals.
Time Management Strategies: Scheduling
This time management strategy is simple, but many people overlook it. Schedule every little task into your day, and then stick to your schedule. Here's how this works: If you feel like you do a mountain of laundry every weekend and would like to keep up with the laundry throughout the week, schedule doing the laundry as a task on weeknights before or after you go to work. Put a load in the washer before you go to bed and in the dryer as soon as you get up. Doing one extra load of laundry a day can make a big difference in the weekend workload.
By the way, if you only schedule your time during your workday, you're missing out on an easy way to improve your time management skills. Schedule all of your time, not just the time you give to your employer.
Time Management Strategies: Time Tracking
Have you ever looked at your watch mid-day and wondered where all the time went? Keep a timesheet for a few days to find out where your time is going. Lawyers and other professionals who bill by the hour do this all the time. Be sure to keep track of your time during the week and on at least one weekend day.
Go back through your time records and categorize your time. Use a highlighter to highlight all the time you spent on the phone in one color, and all the time you spent in the car in another color, all the time you spent on the computer in another color. Analyze the records to find ways to better use your time. If you are frequently online but you don't take advantage of online bill paying, now is the time to make the switch. At the very least, you will know where your time went.
Time Management Strategies: Multi Tasking
Multi tasking is a time management strategy that combines two activities at once. Reading a book on the bus or commuter train is a simple example of multi tasking. While you are driving, you can use audio books to learn a foreign language or simply to catch up on your favorite novel.
