Are You a Time User or a Time Waster?

If you are like me, youve often wished there were 48 hours in a day instead of just 24. There never seems to be enough time to get everything done that you want. Since we just have about 16 hours a day not counting sleep time, its important how we use the time we have.

On the average, people waste about 2 hours a day. This is mainly from poor planning. If a person is unorganized, they waste time trying to find things, they miss appointments, they only do one thing at a time when they could be doing two.

Good time management is a major building block to success. Oftentimes, its not how much time we spend working but how efficiently we do the work. The key to successful time management is careful planning and setting priorities.

Plan your day, your week, and your month in advance. Know when things need to be done. A great way to buy time is to multi-task. Do more than one thing at a time. There are many things that do not require concentrated mental effort. These are more easily combined.

Failing to plan is planning to fail, -unknown

Even though I am a big pro football fan, I cant justify sitting down and spending three hours watching a game. I have to be doing other things while I do it. Thank goodness for instant replay! Ive found this is a good time to spend icing injuries or some other busy work. I can also record the games and watch them while exercising. I exercise about 30 minutes a day so during the football season I can watch a game during the week without wasting any time doing it.

When you run errands try to do as many as you can on one trip. If you are self-employed, you can combine personal errands that are on the way to a business errand and have the mileage written off as a business expense.

Ive been fortunate to have been able to work at home for the past ten years. Its been great because I hate to waste time commuting. If you must commute, you can use the time to listen to audio self-improvement tapes, audio books or anything educational.

If you are a regular exerciser and belong to a gym, think about working out at home. If you lack the space and money for exercise equipment, try traditional body weight exercises. A little research on the Internet can show you websites devoted to this subject. Even though I lifted weights for 20 years, Ive converted to body weight exercises. Ive found they feel better and get the same if not better results. Of course, if you go to the gym to socialize or network, thats okay. Youre doing more than one thing at a time. You can go walking with your wife. That way youre getting exercise and husband / wife interaction at the same time.

Setting priorities enables you to get the most important things done. Keep you eye on the big picture. Dont let low priority things bump off the higher priority tasks from your schedule. If youve only got so much time, its imperative you spend your time doing the things that bring you the most benefit.

Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least. Goethe

Time is so precious. If you want to be successful in life you need to be spending more time being productive and doing things that are moving you forward. Spending hours a day watching TV, playing computer games, or surfing the Internet is not productive time usage. We all need downtime but you need to determine how much is really necessary. If you use your productive time efficiently then you will have more time to relax and do the fun things.

Richard Kimball is a successful entrepreneur, artist, and teacher. His latest project is to share the universal principles of success so that others can achieve prosperity and the fulfillment of their dreams.

Website: Building A Successful Life

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This entry was posted on Saturday, August 23rd, 2008 at 11:48 pm and is filed under Covey Time Management . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.