One of the secrets of stress management is managing your time effectively. As the saying goes times flies. Knowing exactly where it flies puts you one step ahead of the game. When your ineffective with time management you feel like time as gone by but you’ve accomplished nothing. Over the years technology was suppose to give us more time. Just look at the microwave oven, vacuum cleaner, the automobile, internet and cell phone and the list goes on. Yet we still seem to have little time to accomplish all the things we want to do everyday.
When you try to do it all, you usually end up doing a lot of things poorly. The television sitcoms and movies give the impression that you can do it all. Take a look at any movie or sitcom and watch as both parents work full-time, come home to prepare a nutrition meal. Take the children to football practice, soccer practice, dance school. And of course the children have already completed their homework before their parents got home. At the of the day everyone is home happy and in bed by 10:00 PM. I don’t know about you but I thing this family is a fraud. It doesn’t exist or at least it doesn’t exist in my world. We just have too much to do with too little time to do it.
If your time management skills are poor you’ll find that things will quickly get out of control. This is a major cause of stress and worry. Given that we all have the same 24-hours in a day, time or rather lack of time can stress you out.
Here are a few mistakes that people often make causing ineffective time management.
Setting an unrealistic time to complete your tasks
You have a project to complete and based on your past experiences you set aside one hour to get it done. What you haven’t counted on is the phone ringing, someone coming to your office door requiring your attention or the small crisis that needs to be handled now.
Set aside extra time to complete your projects. Assume you will have those interruptions and if you don’t to the victor goes the spoils of added time.
Not know what you want to spend less time doing
Knowing how you want to spend your time is only half the battle. Do you know how you don’t want to spend you time? For instance you may decide you want to:
* Spend fewer hours at the office
* Spend fewer hours cleaning the house
* Spend fewer hours watching television
Eliminate or least minimize, and if possible avoid those activities that you want to do less of. Encourage yourself to do more of those things you want to do.
Not setting priorities
Not everything you do in life has the same importance. Completing tasks in a haphazard way will cause you to waste time.
Begin your week by planning. Set aside about an hour a week to write a schedule. This schedule can give you the grand overview of the tasks that need to be complete. During the week evaluate your schedule to see if your on track. Readjust your schedule as needed.
Create a to-do list and rate each task high, medium or low priority. After you find items that are low priority determine if you can either eliminate or delegate the task. Remember the old saying “If you want something done right do it yourself?” Well you can’t do it all so don’t try. Delegating tasks can not only save you time but a great deal of stress.
And I’d like to invite you to find more ways to manage your stress and enjoy life more.
