Be it Bill Gates or you, everyone has 24 hours a day. It’s no secret that Bill Gates has an insane work schedule. So how does he manage the responsibilities and stay at the top of the game? He schedules his days meticulously and uses every minute productively. If Bill Gates can do it, so can you. The truth is that you have all the time you need to get things done, and all you have to do is take your time seriously and step up your time management game with the following tips.
Time audit
Once you learn where your time goes, it is easy to optimize your time for productivity, focus, and balance. You can accomplish more and enjoy more free time by using time wisely. A time audit is a systematic process to review how you spend time every day. Time audit helps manage time effectively and make informed decisions toward achieving every goal.
To-do list and prioritization
The best way to begin time management is to create a list of tasks on a Word document, alongside the deadlines. Once the list is ready, the next step is to organize and group similar ones before prioritization. Is there a task you can do first and then strike that off with a few others? Doing that first is undoubtedly good time management and prioritization.
Checklist
Having a checklist is a proven way to organize and manage tasks, avoid errors, maintain consistency, increase efficiency and productivity, and ensure the completion of the tasks at hand. Your checklist can also be a psychological tool to enjoy small doses of happiness every time you put that check in the box.
Breaking up tasks into doable pieces
If you plan to read a 200-page book, make it doable by trying 50 or 25 pages every day. If writing a 20-page assignment in four days sounds overwhelming, how about writing five pages every day? Splitting big tasks into small doable pieces – you can call it micro productivity – is a highly recommended one-step-a-time strategy. Breaking tasks down helps make them approachable, identify what steps you should take next, work with small yet specific goals, and get feedback to make course corrections.
Rewards
There is nothing happier than getting rewarded for hard work. So, why not incentivize yourself for your time management skills? If you want to buy your favorite headphones, try to put some money in a jar every time you complete a task. You will soon work your way up to buy the headphones. Or, you can take a fifteen minutes break to catch up on your Instagram feed or listen to your favorite song. And remember to keep it brief. Online media are big-time distractions.
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