Make Time Work for You – Become a Better Time Manager
Time is easily a Kreative Kryptonite for all of us. This is a continuation of Time, a friend or enemy?
Here are three ways you can become a better time manager.
The FIRST way is by tracking your time. Before you roll your eyes out of your head hear me out. To make time work for you, establish the way time plays out in your daily life and routine. If you could free up an extra hour because you took the time to track your time would it be worth it?
Becoming a better time manager is all about knowing what time is available to you to use. I go into detail about tracking your time and provide a Daily Time Tracker spreadsheet here.
The SECOND way relies on the results of time tracking. Block Structure. Where I was spending my time was eye-opening. It also revealed that there were portions of my day that I couldn’t do anything about (work, school, meetings, appointments). Structuring my entire day felt incredibly overwhelming. It made my entire day feel rushed. I felt like a robot programmed to a clock. I constantly felt like I was behind.
I started blocking sections of my day. This allowed me to view my day in blocks or parts with multiple opportunities to get the most out of my day. Then I built structure into those blocks and could tweak the time spent within the “creative” block each day. This allowed me to get more out of my day without feeling claustrophobic. You can refer to the Daily Time Tracker and see how the blocks were formed as I tracked my days. The only thing left to do, play Tetris with those blocks of time and rearrange as needed.
Time is what we want most, but use worst.
-William Penn
The THIRD way to become a better time manager is to be flexible. Don’t stress, adapt. Time can be your friend or your enemy so make a choice that it will be your friend. How will you handle interruptions? How will you react to someone else being late to your meeting and causing you to go over one of your block structures?
Realize you share time with everyone else. Yes, you can structure and organize your day but there are times that you truly are in a timeshare. This is when time being fluid should be used to your advantage. Chart a new course for your day in the middle of it if you have to. It’s all about winning the day anyway no matter how you get there.
These are three ways that improved my time management. It worked for me. The good news is you get a brand new 24 hours to work with tomorrow.
watching time pic by: Szűcs László