11 Steps to Better Time Management

According to Psychology Today, time management is the ability to plan and control how you spend the hours in your day to effectively accomplish your goals. Time management is so important because time is the most valuable resource that we can give to others. With this being said, we all need to know how to implement better time management practices in our lives. So, here are 11 ways to manage your time better than you are right now:

1. Learn how to better focus with the time that you already have, instead of trying to find more time. Trying to extend your already busy day hardly ever benefits.
2. Create a better plan. How often do you get to the end of your day and find that you didn’t accomplish what you wanted to? If this is the case, you need to take action with a better plan.
3. Realize how important a sense of accomplishment is. Can you imagine what it will feel like to complete the work that you have wanted to for days, weeks, months, or even years? That should be enough to make you manage your time in better ways.
4. Create realistic deadlines and stick to them. This way you can complete your current work and move on to the next project.
5. Learn to say “no” to those things that don’t bring a benefit to your life.
6. Stop waiting and stop being early. If you have to prepare for something, then that’s a different story. But that old rule that says you need to be 20 minutes early to everything is nonsense. If you’re 20 minutes early to everything, then you waste hours of your life just waiting. But if you do find yourself waiting, make sure to always have something with you that you can work on.
7. Set timers when you work, so you don’t have to constantly check the clock. This increases focus and lets you create your very best work.
8. Details can be important, but know that unimportant details always become distractions.
9. Set your priorities, so that you can only focus on what is important to you. Do what only you can do.
10. Work in set batches. If you’re like me, once you have your mind set on something, you work best when you are in the zone. That’s why I have scheduled every day of the week to hold a different project that I’m working on. In doing this, I not only know what I will be doing beforehand, so that I can mentally prepare, but I can communicate to others what I will be working on at any given time. This allows me to get the work done that I need to get done, and it sharpens my focus on the task at hand.
11. This being said, take breaks throughout your day at good stopping points. Any break you can give your mind will rejuvenate you and your work.

Use these 11 tips to implement better time management in your life, and make sure to enjoy all the extra time you find along the way.