We hear it all the time!

• I’ll get around to it!

• I don’t have time!

• I’m trying to save time!

• I need more time!

• I don’t have enough hours in the day!

• I feel I’m wasting time!

We know we all have the same time; and that the only time we can control is the present.

Articles tell us that successful people plan their days; don’t let interruptions hinder their day; that they deal with priorities first – so what does that make us? Not successful OR human!

I believed my time management was good, but recall many years ago, attending a one-day ‘time management’ seminar which proved the opposite, and recall three tips I was given and still use today.

Paper-mover – Every time you pick up a document or paper on your desk and don’t do something with it, i.e. action it, tear off the corner. I practiced this and realised how many times I was being a ‘paper-mover’; the act of doing this made me more aware even to this day how much I can revisit things more than once before actioning it!

I challenge you to record, even for one day, how many times you look at an email or document and don’t do anything with it, and then diarise a time to do it!

Unused Gaps – Book meetings back to back rather than have gaps in between to ‘do’ things arising from each meeting. I used to build in these gaps all the time and realised that I didn’t get anything productive done in these short ‘half-hour’ gaps, but changing these to back-to-back meetings, where possible, gained me a decent time at the end of the day to action items arising from the meetings.

Try this for one day and see how it works for you!

Silencing the Ping – I hear continually from my clients and colleagues that the dreaded ‘ping’ from an email or Facebook instills the compulsion to read the email or look at Facebook. With the email (refer to point 1). Think about how easy it is not to have your email account open at certain times of the day. With Facebook or other social media, notifications can be turned off to avoid the temptation!

Try blocking out set times in each day to deal with emails and social media and remove those pesky ‘pings’. By eliminating interruptions such as these we can create more productive days.

You might be thinking right now ‘Why am I wasting my time reading this’ and of course if you are then you might be getting side-tracked from what you were meant to be doing right now! However, even if you take away one tip from this blog it will have been worthwhile.

Contrary to common belief, we can become more organised, and in control of our time, and in doing so be more efficient with our time. As the saying goes, ‘Time is precious so waste it wisely’.

So! Don’t waste your time any longer and incorporate these changes in your life – whilst there’s still time!