Top ways to maximise your time 1

Essential time-saving tips

Maximising your time is about focusing on the right things. Don’t just make yourself busy, but be busy doing the things that matter. Too many of us use our time to complete unimportant tasks rather than doing the things that really need sorting out.

Identify how you spend your time

Spending a short while working out what you normally do with your time will help you in the long-run. Identifying those areas where time is being wasted and where it is being well spent will help you to prioritise. What counts is not the amount of time that you put in overall, but the amount of time that you spend working on important, worthwhile tasks.

Set goals

It’s all well and good being efficient with your time, but to what end if you really don’t know how you want to spend it? Many people spend precious time and energy trying to be more efficient without setting goals — in other words, they don’t focus on the things that are most important to them. By knowing precisely what you want to achieve, you will know exactly where to concentrate your efforts. Having set goals can also be a good motivator.

Keep a ‘to do’ list

You can keep a list in your head of things that need doing, but it’s far better to free your mind of this by writing or typing a list, which you can then refer to throughout the day. Your list could be written on a piece of paper, typed and saved on your computer, or held in a Filofax system — it’s really up to you. Ticking off jobs as you do them can give a real sense of satisfaction and spur you on to complete the rest — plus, of course, using the list will reduce the amount of time you take up thinking about what you need to do.

Prioritise

It’s no good compiling a list if you put everything in the wrong order! There’s always a temptation to do the things that you want to do first, rather than the things that you need to do. Sort out your priorities and deal with the important things first. Whatever is left incomplete at the end of the day probably didn’t need doing immediately anyway, and can be dealt with on another occasion.

Do it right first time

If you try to complete a task half-heartedly when you’re not really in the mood for it, then it’s likely that you’re not going to complete it properly. Make sure you take the time to do things ‘right’ or to the best of your ability on the first occasion, so that the fewer mistakes you make, the less time you will waste going back and having to do it all over again. Doing the important things first — when you’re most ‘switched on’ and alert — means you’ll be more likely to do them correctly.

Stop putting things off

Most people have a tendency to procrastinate and look for ways out of doing what they should actually be doing. It’s especially easy to do this if you’re surrounded by lots of distractions that give you an excuse to put something off. So, try controlling your environment by removing most of those distractions. It is often best to do the thing you’d least like to do first, as all your avoidance tactics will often be aimed at putting off this one task. Just thinking of the reasons why that task should be done should be enough to make you do it.