Let me start this post with a few inspirational quotes from succesful people.

Every child is born a genius. ( Albert Einstein )

What he means by this, is that everyone is born with exceptional talents, but only a small percentage of all people actually discover their talents and realize how smart they are in a particular field of expertise. Effective time management plays an important role in the discovery of your talents.

Success is focusing the full power of all you are on what you have a burning desire to achieve. ( Wilferd A. Peterson)

Once you have discovered your talents, it comes down to will power and effictive planning.

Many people assume that they can probably find many ways to save time. This is an incorrect assumption for it is only when you focus on spending time that you begin to use your time effectively. ( Merril Douglas )

Action without planning is the reason for every failure ( Peter Drucker )

 
There’s alot of truth and wisdom in these quotes. It’s easy to think of ideas to save time and be more productive. What only a few people do, is actually executing these ideas to save time.
Do you ever feel completely exhausted by the end of the day, with a feeling you have nothing accomplished at all?
If you answered yes to this question, you probably don’t manage your time effectively. It makes you wonder how some people manage to achieve so much more in a day with the exact same amount of time as yourself.

Their secret is quite simple: effective time management. Spending time on planning on how you will spend your time is absolutely necessary if you want to get the most out of your valuable day. Big success is not possible without detailed time management. Succesful people don’t mess around. They plan every day, every week, every year and even their whole lifes. They know exactly what they want and they know exactly how to get it. In other words, they have complete control over their life and future. This is one of the main differences between average and highly effective people. I recently read an article about high achievers. The top 3% of all high achievers write and rewrite their goal lists all the time. They constantly analyze and evaluate their goals and look for ways to improve them and be even more productive.

In this post I’ll show you how I get the most out of my day and how I reduce time wasting behavior as much as possible. This is not long-term goal planning (this is something I will talk about in another post). What I write here is short-term planning. It’s a combination of different methods of time management. It works for me and ever since I use this system (just recently!), my work productivity increased drastically! Luckily, time management is a skill. A very EASY SKILL that you can master if you’re willing to learn more about it.

 

Make a DETAILED schedule…

The first thing to do when you want to manage your time effectively, is conquering your time-wasting habits and replace them with productive actions.
Because they are habits, you aren’t conscious about them. You do them without thinking. That’s why you need to ask yourself “What am I doing here and how can I transform this terrible habit into productive actions?”

Once you have identified your biggest time-wasters, you have to make a schedule in which you will replace these habits with new ones. No matter how little time these bad habits demand from you, replace them.
To plan my whole week, I make a general schedule on sunday for the week to come. I have 1 or 2 large goals in mind for this new week and I write them down in big letters on a paper. This piece of paper stays on my desk for the entire week, so I get reminded of my main goals each time I get back to my desk. This may sound stupid and you may think that remembering these goals in your brain would have the same results. Not true… I don’t write these goals down because my short-term memory is leaking; I write them down because it helps me to stay motivated. Reading these goals so many times during the week has a psychological effect and makes you work harder and more motivated.

Ok, so you have one or more goals for the upcoming week. Get into more detail now. Split up your weekly goal into small subgoals. Set up a deadline for each sub-goal and add both to your weekly schedule. A goal is pointless without a deadline, so it’s very important to estimate the amount of time you need for it. Most people call this simply their to-do list. Winston Churchill called it his “actions this day” list.
Once you’ve estimated the time needed for a subgoal, schedule 50% more time for it. An extra margin is necessary because you never know what will happen. If you estimate just enough time, unexpected occurence of events may prevent you from meeting your deadline. Also, when you are executing tasks, new tasks will come to mind and these new tasks have to fit in your schedule somewhere.
This will not only mess up your entire planning, you will also feel demotivated.
Effective, detailed daily planning is very powerful and every succesful person does it. It’s a blueprint for your day and it brings order into a chaotic life. Make this a habit and your productivity will skyrocket!

After you marked a deadline for a subgoal, substract the estimated time for that subgoal and mark the starting date and time for it on your schedule.
Once you’ve set up all your subgoals and deadlines, you’ll have to split up your subgoals into different mini-tasks. Whatever the field it is you are working in, these tasks have to be very detailed. Detailed in such a way that you can immediately start executing them when you read them. If you need to do research for a specific task, do it first and start executing your task as soon as you know how. When you have specific tasks, you’ll have control of your goals. And having control over your goals will motivate you.

Tools to make a schedule..

Before I forget to mention: it is not important how exactly you plan your short-term goals, as long as you write them down somewhere and invest time in doing that. This is the single most important factor of time management. Sitting down and writing tasks on a paper may sound like a waste of time, but it is not. It will pay off. The more time you spend on planning, the easier it will become to execute them and the more believable your plans become.
The easiest planning tool is a piece of paper. Use a piece paper for each weekly goal, 1 seperate piece of paper for each day of the week and start writing.
I don’t use paper for writing down my goals. I use a simple software program called Taskplus. Daily planning made easy. It’s fun, it’s cheap and it improves my productivity.
You can use whatever you want… There are literally hundreds of these software tools.
Alternativily, you can use an agenda, a calendar, a palmtop, a laptop or even your cellphone! It doesn’t matter what you use, as long as you take time to do it.

Organize your workspace…

My desk used to be a complete mess all the time. Coke cans, Red bull cans, coffee cups from the week before, pieces of useless paper, bills, … It took me hours to find something! I was not aware of how much damage a messy desk did to my productivity. Now I only have things on my desk that are absolutely necessary. I threw away almost everything and was amazed to see how much junk I never use! Stuff you rarely use, but can’t throw away: put it in a box for away from your workspace. Keep only things on your desk that are necessary for your achieving the tasks on your daily to-do list. You will feel an increased motivation to finish your tasks.

More simple tips for saving time…

• Always schedule time for recreation. You may think that this is an unproductive time-waster, but it’s not. Never taking time off work hurts your productivity more than taking a few hours of for recreation. The more stressful your work is, the more important it becomes to take time for recreation.
• Make your schedule flexible. This means, always add more time than you think is needed for a specific task. Unexpected events can and will happen.
• Mark your deadlines with big red letters so you instantly see them when looking at your schedule.
• Rank your tasks in order of importance.
• Plan your most complex tasks for the time of the day when you feel best. During your so called prime-time. If you are a morning person, plan complex tasks in the morning and small, unimportant tasks in the evening.
• Create a storage system for even the simplest objects. Each drawer in your desk should have some sort of organization. You’ll never have to search through 10 different drawers again because you know instantly where to look!
• If you really want pictures of your family on your desk, don’t overdo it! Your work space should be organized for work… It’s not a storage place for your family photo albums!
• If your workspace is a desk, invest in a comfortable chair! It’s ridiculous to save money on a chair, especially if your job requires sitting down at a desk all day. Move all the extra chairs you never use out of your way.

 
Alright, I hope this post will make your life at least a little more organized and gave you a nice motivation boost! Next time I’ll talk about long-term goal planning.

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