6 Things To Instantly Improve Your Time Management

Ever feel like life is running at break-neck speed and you are always caught on the back foot? It’s a common problem for many people: as new technology makes us ever-more connected, we are constantly reminded of all the professional and social obligations we aren’t keeping up with. Time management become one of the most important things today.

While many of our new digital gadgets are intended to help us live more efficiently and productively, they can often have the opposite effect. Here we take a look over the 6 easy and instant ways you can improve your time management and slow down your busy life to start making better use of your time.

Get Enough Sleep

Essential for becoming more productive at work, to being fitter, healthier and happier, sleep is instrumental to our lives. Yet so few of us can sincerely say they regularly get the full amount they need. Being overtired can have serious consequences: scattered memory, physical exhaustion, and increased stress, none of which are conducive to better time management. Try to make sure you get a full 7-8 hours every night for optimum cognitive and physical performance.

Use A Real Watch

Although almost all of us habitually use our mobile phones to tell the time, this can be an enormous drain. Our phones communicate so much information to us that simply tapping the home button to read the clock can be enough to distract us. Whether it’s a Facebook notification, a new email, or a news article, there are so many avenues for the distraction it is rare that we don’t interact with our phones for minutes at a time.

Wearing a watch is an easy remedy: from cheap drugstore models to a more upmarket option like the range from IWC, keeping the time on your wrist ensures you stay focused on exactly what you are doing in the moment. If you are more focused, you will improve your time management.

Make Use of ‘Down Time’

Commuting, waiting rooms, working out at the gym; these are all opportunities to be doing something rather than accumulating dead time. Whether it is catching up on emails, planning your day or chatting with a friend, finding an extra use for this time is a great way of completing multiple tasks at once.

Use A Calendar

Keeping a calendar is one of the quickest and easiest ways to effectively get a grasp on your day’s activities and map out your time. No matter if you prefer to keep a digital log using an app, a calendar linked to your email, such as with Google Calendar, or a good old-fashioned journal, keeping a log of appointments and duties means they never slip through the cracks.

Arrange Fun Activities

One of the biggest reasons people lapse into procrastination and bad habits is because they don’t have anything to look forward to. By planning ahead and giving yourself a deadline to work to, you will find yourself instantly better motivated. It could be seeing friends for a card game, watching a movie or just cooking your favorite meal, anything which defines a cut-off limit where you can stop working and enjoy yourself will have this motivating effect.

Learn To Say No

A big problem many people have is saying ‘no’ to things. Be it covering for a colleague at work, helping out a friend or attending a relative’s event, these unplanned occurrences can often get the better of us and throw us off schedule. There are various resources out there to help people learn to be more assertive: through taking control of the activities you participate in, you will instantly have a better grasp of your own time.