Are you someone who has experienced what it seems like to be busy and not productive? Well, relax, I’ve been there and I know how it feels. I fought with it and was so hard on myself and guess what… it just became worse, so I had to calm down and check some things out. I had to review a lot of things about myself, I found new ways to get better and I want to share them with you. So, talking about being productive, what works for you may not work for me and vice versa, so this post is to help you discover what can work for you and not really my full story. Mind you, this post isn’t to tell you how to be early to meetings (although it could help with that), it is just to show you how you can actually become productive by noting some things. You know, we all talk about time management, we know the meaning of time right? It’s the duration of something. Now management is the ability to make something that doesn’t seem enough to be enough. This isn’t a dictionary definition, it’s just the way I see it, so, let’s move on. We have 24 hours in a day and even though it’s actually enough if used correctly, it never ever seems to be enough, hence it’s called “TIME MANAGEMENT”. Now, let’s highlight some reasons why time never seems to be enough, they are: Adding so many things to your to do list. Wasting time on unnecessary things. Spending time with people who drain your energy. Allowing other people to barge into your plans. Not planning your day right. All these above and more are what makes it seem like time is never enough, well you may not be able to fully avoid some of the things listed above, you need to actually find ways to manage time, so let’s discuss them. All these and more are the things I have practiced and they have helped me become more productive with my time. SET YOUR PRIORITIES RIGHT You might have heard this over and over again and here is it again because it is actually true and the truth does not change. What are the most important things to you? What are the things you value? You need to do the most important and urgent ones first, others can wait. For instance, my spirituality is very important to me, so before anything else I spend time with God first, I spend time reading my Bible and praying, then whatever is important to me again follows. FIND WHAT TIME OF THE DAY YOU ARE MOST EFFECTIVE. Are you a morning person, afternoon or night person? Find that out and put the most important things in that time, it’s not compulsory you do everything in the morning. If you are not a morning person, don’t try to force it, don’t try to be someone else, BE YOU. DO NOT MULTITASK I did this a lot when I started writing to do lists, multitasking can make you end up doing nothing if you are not yet trained to do so, so what I did what I set a 90% rule, if I’m not 90% done with something, I will not do another thing. I had to start that way and grow, and I really saw a change. It was easier for me to finish my to do list. Don’t try to do everything at once, as time goes on you will be able to multitask, but if you are just starting out, use the 90% rule. IT’S OKAY TO SAY NO Stop allowing people to barge into what you are doing with unnecessary talks or asking you to come for a party or something. If you know it is going to affect you negatively, it’s okay to say no. Remember you don’t have to be rude about it, you can just say “oh I’m so sorry, my schedule will not allow me”. You can be firm and polite. USE MUSIC “How?” That’s probably the question on your mind, right? lol. You know, there are times you spend 7minutes doing something that should done for just 5 minutes, so I play a song of 5 minutes and work with the song, when the song is almost coming to on end, I know I need to move faster. So it is a way to enjoy yourself while working and actually work faster. STOP WRITING TOO MANY THINGS ON YOUR TO DO LIST I was so guilty of this, I used to write too many thing on my to do list and I may end up doing just half of what I wrote. Highlight the three most important things for you to do and fix them in the time of the day you are most effective, do them first, them do others that are not so important for that particular day later. If you wrote so many things and you were not able to do them all, don’t worry, divide them into two and do just one part for the next day. When you get consistent with that, you can begin to add more. There are also some things to discuss about time that can help you become more productive, they are the ways to help you identity how you have been actually using your time. The four things I know of that you can do with your time are: You can waste your time. You can spend your time. You can save your time. You can invest your time. ( Just like money… time na money). We will discuss them on my next blog post, so stay tuned. Till then, make sure you look into what I listed above and put them into use. Remember, knowledge is a tool for application, knowledge is power only when applied
