Managing your time more efficiently means that at the end of each day you have:

• spent time doing the important things in your life
• not spent time doing the unimportant things
• more free time for yourself to spend relaxing, doing things you love or with people you love
• the ability to go to sleep feeling good about what you have achieved rather than worrying about all the things still not done

Can anyone become more efficient at managing their time?

There are two types of people in the world; those with a clock in their head (time watchers) and those without (time enjoyers). If you are a time watcher then, yes, time management skills will come more naturally to you. Time watchers can be chronically early and find it pretty easy to plan their day in their heads. They tend to achieve more than time enjoyers. Time watchers do, however, find it more challenging to remember to live in the moment and enjoy the journey. They find it hard to bring their focus back from the destination to the ‘now’. They live in the future rather than the present.

Time enjoyers can be chronically late as they are unaware of time passing and can really focus upon and enjoy the moment. As a result, however, they don’t always achieve as much as they might like out of life… and compared with time watchers, may feel that they waste time.

Fortunately both types of people can learn the traits of the other:

• Time watchers can learn to enjoy the moment while still being aware of time. They can learn to be less driven by time while still achieving the same results.
• Time enjoyers can learn to make more efficient use of their time while still enjoying the journey and living in the present.

Regardless of which type of person you are, there are benefits to learning time management skills in our busy world.

Does managing your time mean you have to become rigid and lose the joy and flexibility from your day?

Not at all. If you are using your time management skills effectively, you will be:

• Remembering to focus upon the joy in every moment of the day; no matter what you are doing;
• Creating more free time for yourself in which you can be as joyous and flexible as you would like knowing that you feel happier having done all the tasks that needed doing in less time than it would have taken you previously.

What does it take?

There are 6 easy steps to managing your time and creating more free time for yourself:

1. Set goals
2. Prioritize
3. Know where your time is currently going
4. Prepare daily action plans
5. Defeat time robbers
6. Make efficiency gains

And the magical key to the whole process… HAVE FUN while you are doing what you are doing (regardless of what it is). It is wonderful to have time to enjoy the people and things you love, but it is a fact of life that there are any number of other things you will have to do in your daily life. The key is to be present and find ways to enjoy the moment while you are doing the things you both have to do and love to do. That way, not one single moment of your life is lost to unnecessary misery and you will have more joy and laughter in every moment.

Step 1: Set goals

Goals are the starting point of effective time management. Once you have them, you use them as your personal time management tool. If you find yourself doing something that doesn’t fit within your goals or doesn’t help you achieve the results you require, tell yourself that you don’t have time for it. It is the time we spend doing unimportant things that steals from us the time we could better spend on the important things in life (whatever they are). It is when we are not finding the time to spend on the things that matter, that we begin to experience time related stress.

If you want to do this step really well, you will force yourself into that space of ruthless honesty we rarely enter. Work out what is really important in life to you; not other people, not ‘society’; but you.

Step 2: Determine your priorities

Working out your goals isn’t enough. Once you have set yourself some goals it is time to prioritize them. There are goals that are critical to your life and other goals that are just ‘nice to have’. One of the key secrets to being a great time manager is to focus at least some of your efforts every day on the critical goals; the things that will really help to shape your life, business or career.

Step 3: Know where your time goes

Budgeting your time is like budgeting your money. The first step to being good at it is to understand where it is currently being spent. How do you currently spend your day?

Did you know, for example, that research by the A.C. Nielson groups showed that the average American spends more than 4 hours each day watching TV and less than 3.5 minutes engaging in meaningful conversation with their children? If you were unaware that such a large portion of your day was spent doing this activity, you might struggle to see how you could possibly fit in 30 minutes of exercise in your day.

How about the manager who keeps track and finds that he is spending 3.5 hours of every day in meetings, many of which do not produce outcomes or it is not necessary for him or her to attend? Knowing where the manager’s time is going, allows him/her to make choices about what is important to be achieved each day. If he or she made a decision not to attend even one of those meetings in a day, he or she may have an additional hour at the end of each day to spend with loved ones or relaxing.

Step 4: Daily action plans

Setting goals and prioritising them is not enough. You also need to plan the steps you will take to make them happen, the time you will spend on them and when you will spend that time. You may need to have a big picture plan if your goals will take several weeks, months or years to achieve. As well you will need to plan what you will do every day. This type of plan is called a daily action plan.

A daily action plan:

• Lists the tasks you wish to achieve today; AND
• Prioritizes them so that the most important one goes to the top of the list and the least important one goes to the bottom of the list.

The key then is to start with the most important item on the list and work on it until it is finished or you have done everything you can. When the first item is finished, then you move onto the second item.

There will be many more fun jobs clamouring for your attention, but with a little bit of willpower you will be able to push them to the bottom of the list, leave them there and focus your attention on the things that really matter. You will be able to do this because:

• If the important things are done in your day, you have had the best day possible;
• It doesn’t matter if the unimportant things aren’t done;
• Doing unimportant things first means that you will have less time in the day to the unimportant things;
• Doing unimportant things might mean that you have to spend an extra hour at working getting the important things done at the end of the day. This cuts into time you could have spent on yourself, doing things that are important to you or with people who matter to you.

Step 5: Defeating the time robbers

There are very clever sneaky things lurking in everyone’s day that attempt to rob them of time. Some of them are cunningly disguised as friends and work colleagues and others are cunningly disguised as ‘urgent’ tasks. There are two key steps to defeating time robbers:

1. Become aware of who/what they are. Step 3 should have helped you here. They can be people who drop in and chat, they can be your inability to say ‘no’ when other people ask, time spent in airports or the number of emails you have to go through. In the words of a wise counsellor I know, ‘A problem well identified is a problem half solved’.
2. Take steps to eliminate them from your life or reduce the amount of time they steal. There are any number of strategies you can use to defeat time robbers. Some are things such as, remove visitors chairs from your office to stop drop in callers staying very long, hold stand up meetings so they are shorter, use waiting time at the airport for planning etc.

The greatest time waster in many people’s lives is usually self inflicted… it is procrastination. Procrastination is a form of self inflicted punishment (usually guilt) before the reward (doing the job and feeling better). It is not a healthy activity to engage in. One way to overcome it is to be just as creative about finding reasons to do the job as you usually are about finding reasons not to do the job.

Step 6: Find ways to become more efficient

The last step to becoming more efficient at managing your time and free yourself up to become more efficient in the way you approach tasks. Don’t let the sound of this overwhelm you or make you feel bogged down in guidelines and rules. Becoming more efficient can be as simple as putting things back where you got them from, getting the children to clean up their toys after themselves etc. There is some amazing research showing the average number of days a year people spending looking for lost things at home and at work. You could, however, just bypass this process and put things back in the first place and free up the time you otherwise would have had to spend looking for it the next time you or someone else wanted it.

Other things you can do are simple things like batch jobs (do all of a similar type of job at the same time during a day), have clean working spaces, cook meals in bulk and freeze the leftovers and do all your shopping in one trip.

If you can implement these 6 steps for effective time management into your life, you will get more done in less time and free yourself up for the people and things that really matter to you.

- Sandra Rodman B Com LLB LLM Master Results Coach, Master Performance Consultant, Master NLP Practitioner, Master Ericsonian Hypnosis, Reiki Practitioner, Pellowah Practitioner and author of ‘Time Management: The 6 Easy Steps To having More Free Time’ shares the techniques she has used and teaches others to become more efficient time managers, take back control of their life and have more time for themselves and the things that matter to them. More information and order link www.easytimemanagementsteps.com

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Here’s the synopsis of Noteberg’s talk about the famous Italian timeboxing method:

“You have so much you need to accomplish today. Your list is a mile long and you find yourself getting interrupted every other minute. You’d like to tell everyone to leave you alone, but most of the interruptions are coming from you! You think of a phone call you need to make or a web site you need to check and before you know it you’re answering email, checking twitter, and finding a million other things to occupy your time.

You need to focus – really focus.

The Pomodoro Technique puts you back in charge of your day. You’ll apply successful techniques from software engineering to identify what you should be doing today and to help you achieve your goals. Your mind won’t wander when it is fully engaged in short bursts of focused activity.”

Source: Parleys.com

Learn to work less and accomplish more using nothing more than paper, pencil, and a simple kitchen timer.

If you’re new about Pomodoro technique – read more about it here.

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One thing is certain: the most effective and successful people are experts in time management and they have the same number of hours in the day as you do. So time management has nothing to do with magically expanding time to suit your needs, but of using it effectively. It is a question of self-management rather than time-management.

Here are some tips on utilizing your time effectively:

1. Identify what is really important in your life and build your activities and goals around these big rocks. Having clear Core Values will avoid decision paralysis.
2. Identify what are your time wasters: how much time do you spend watching TV? How many activities do you do that can be delegated to others? Do you live in a cluttered environment that drains your energy? Which activities can you eliminate without any particularly important repercussions? How much time do you spend worrying over things that are not within your circle of influence?
3. Eliminate procrastination. Just stop it plain and simple. Identify why you are procrastinating and challenge your assumptions. Are you a perfectionist?- learn how to manage it. Do you create a huge To Do list that’s impossible to go through? – cut out on the list. Do you feel overwhelmed with some large tasks? – chunk them down in smaller activities… and just DO it.
4. Use a planning system such as a To Do list everyday. Having a To Do list will help you to focus on the Big Rocks of life especially if you prioritize well.
5. Plan the hardest task and DO IT the first thing so that you get over the hardest task early on when you have high energy levels- in other words, as they say: eat your frog.
6. Learn to time activities correctly. I find that people who are not outstanding achievers generally lack the ability to time activities effectively. If you do not time activities effectively you will find yourself sliding off your schedule and missing out on important activities.
7. Focus on the task at hand. Do not start doing many things at the same time. Chunk big jobs into smaller ones, focus on the particular task, get it done and then move on. And please – do not give me the multi tasking excuse. Yes you can multi-task but you have to be focused on the task at hand.
8. Do not handle an activity twice when you can finish it in one sequence. E.g unless you are sure you can take the time to answer an email or a letter right away- do not open it.
9. Give a strict time frame to meetings or activities. Make sure you come out with clear actions from the meeting as otherwise it is just a waste of time.
10. Drop tasks that you do not need to do or those which are of no benefit. Learn to delegate effectively. Make sure that you delegate to people who have the knowledge and skills and delegate a task completely. Offer help if required but don’t breath down people’s necks.
11. Avoid being distracted by requests or telephones during activities which you need to focus on intensively. Give clear instructions that you are not to be disturbed unless the office is on fire.
12. Never leave the scene of a situation that requires a decision without taking a specific action. Taking an action right away will ensure you save time in the future. If you keep procrastinating on an action you need to take it will come back to you with a vengeance and you will waste more time trying to solve the repercussions.

To receive a FREE Report that provides information on the 10 Vital Keys to Life Success and other resources visit http://www.insightzonecoach.com or http://www.insightzonecoach.com/blog.

Reggie Aquilina is the Founder of Insight Zone Academy. He is a Life Coach and works in the field of Adult Learning and Development. He is actively involved in providing e-learning resources related to Life Coaching and he is the creator of the Life Coaching Home Study Course: The 10 PowerKeys Program.

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Sometimes I just couldn’t tolerate with too much opinions – especially those which are baseless opinions. Therefore you should follow your conscience before you make any crucial decisions. In order words, your common sense is important in making fast decisions. Maybe you should try bittergourd and cabbage juice.

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• They couldn’t read the instructions properly – they might miss a few steps or overlook a few steps
• They couldn’t read maps – tend to lose their way in a city cause they have no-sense of direction
• They were basically indecisive in making quick decisions – they would frequently ask for confirmation from others before making a right decision. As a result, they tend to make bad decision that made people turned away from them.

Frankly speaking, I’m one of them – yeah, it’s true!  You would label them as losers or a born loser. Specifically, there are few problems being one of them. Here are these problems:

• I’m unable to write essays in normal people write it from A-to-Z, i.e. first, you would write the heading, content body, and the ending. I had these problems since I was a primary student (aged less than 11), and my mom complained that I wrote stories with inappropriate sequences. It sounded like a train that is moving a derailed railway road.
• I’m bad at directions but I can read the maps. At some circumstances, I would take more than three trips (to and fro) to remember the route to a destination. Unlike my dad my (ahem) big brother, they are natural-born-travelers. That’s why I need to have a road map in my car, in case I got lost in the middle of nowhere.

I can say I’m doer-person, a self-confessed procrastinator, an ‘idealist’, a worker,  a blogger and etc – I’m just a normal being like you.

How do I deal with these problems? First, I have to be very honest to myself and accept who I am and the weakness that I possess. There’s nothing to ashamed of by being ‘real’ you.

Since I had realized my problems that I described earlier, I’ve to come of a right solution for myself. So, the next question is – How should I do when I couldn’t do things in order? You might say this – create a task list, get an electronic organizer, set an alarm and etc. Well, I can say it works for me but I don’t depend on it all the time.

It is because I’ve found a better solution – I’ve few stacks of post-it pads and I use it by drawing simple diagrams on it. It sounds simple – yeah, it surely did! I had the habit of scribbling notes and drawing small diagrams on the margins on the handouts, notebooks but not on reference books and novels (no drawings are allowed in these areas!).

When I have something on my mind, I’ll jot it down on a piece of paper or text it with my cellphone (which i can save it in my cellphone so that I can view it later). Why jotting it down on a post-it pad?

Most of the time, post-it pads were not reachable at that moment and I would not use that as an excuse to lose an idea or an event. Who knows it would come in handy someday? If you think you can afford to lose ideas all the time, then you should stop reading this post immediately.

I don’t usually bother with the sequences and the description of an idea. Thus, browse through what I’ve written earlier and try to interpret it before I draw and write on my paper notebook or post-it pads. Previously, I had tried both notebook and post-it pads but in the end I would prefer to use post-it pads due to its convenience – it’s arrangeable and it’s easy to be discarded (and one more, it’s sticky!).

It’s a complete disaster if you force yourself to become creative. Creativity is like a spark of fire -  if there’s a friction between two ends, sparks will be emerged. But if you’re creating too much sparks at that moment, you’ll probably will be ended up like a roasted chicken. If you have a topic to discuss, start to sort out your information that you gathered earlier.

This involves Getting Things Done (GTD) technique to organize your information. Therefore, it requires elimination process to get rid of redundant or irrelevant information. It is crucial for selecting information before you start drawing.

It is difficult in the beginning, but you’ll get along with the process if you practice it at a regular basis. If you want to use your simple drawings in your presentation, it’s preferable to redraw or make necessary changes on it before your view your final drawings in front of your audience.

If you feel that your drawings are too abstract or difficult to understand, it’s better to tone down your drawings and make it simpler. Like a memorable quote from Einstein:

“The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”

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• I couldn’t find my favorite pen.
• I was outside and I left my notebook at home/office/car.
• Just being lazy when ideas popped out during bedtime and I would actually forget it in the next morning.

So I’ve come out of solution to these problems as mentioned above with simple methods:

• I don’t actually bother what should I use to draw. I’d normally use any pencil, pen, marker and etc – as long I can draw and jot down short notes.
• Based on the previous point, I would draw simple diagrams or write short notes on a simple piece of paper, post-it pads, rough paper, back of an envelope, or anything that is writable – personally I would prefer post-it pads.
• If I don’t have both as mentioned above, I would use my cell phone in which has one of the “Organizer” features like “Notes” – it is meant for texting short message as your simple note-making.

Yesterday, I was looking information about earning a certified MBA (CMBA). At first, I didn’t know what is CMBA was all about. Then, I browsed through some information on the internet and drew some pictures on my notebook and also on post-it pads.

I would prefer to draw on post-it pads because:

• I’m not good at drawing from ‘A-to-Z’. Ideas just popped up all of sudden and it’s not based on correct sequences. I’ll rearrange the sequences after I’ve completed all my drawings on respective post-it pads.
• It is disposable and I can redraw on a fresh sheet of post-it pad.

Here are some simple drawings used as my notes on CMBA:

Figure above shows the problems of excessive MBA graduates in the view of the employer or the recruiter firm. Earning of an online MBA is current fad that increased numbers of MBA graduates worldwide.

The next one is drawn on a post-it pad. It shows the advantage of earning a certified MBA to be noticeable during the job recruitment process. This represents the employer’s/recruiter’s view while searching for the right candidate to work for his organization.

You might wondering this – Who’s eligible to take up this certified MBA course? I’ve answered it this way:

• Those who are still enrolling at a MBA course and they have just completed their core MBA courses or
• Those who are MBA graduates/completed their MBA program.

It is some sort of “transformation” process – to add a ‘c’ on the word ‘MBA’. This makes a lot of difference when it comes to job recruitment.

Here’s the application process of getting yourself a certified MBA that is depicted on my notebook. It involves eight steps from application submission to completing the final exam – source: Certified MBA

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Therefore, that’s the reason why it is called the Pomodoro Technique in which the word “pomodoro” means “tomato” in Italian. It was firstly discovered by Francesco Cirillo in the 80’s for the means of improving personal time management by eliminating distraction and increase productivity.

It was developed when Francesco wanted to maximize the use of his time (perhaps 10 minutes) on his revision since he had several upcoming exams. It didn’t work that well as he expected in the beginning, but he enduringly putting his time and efforts of improving his timeboxing idea in which is comprehensively discussed in present team productivity workshops.

Personally speaking, what would you do in the first 10 minutes when you wanted to complete a task?

You would be doing this before you start your work:

Checking your mail inbox
• Checking your profile at Facebook
• Chat online with your friends
• Reading or commenting on other people’s blog posts
• And there are so much more to do except work.

Francesco noticed this problem – lack of focus on work, during his campus days.

The Italian Pomodoro Technique for Personal Improvement – The Basics

Watch this short clip that shows the overview of the Pomodoro Technique.

Here are the lists of tools that are needed for Pomodoro Technique:

• Kitchen timer – you can use all sorts of timer not necessarily pomodoro-looking timer.
• Pencil
• Daily task sheet list a.k.a. To Do Today Sheet – view sample
• Activity Inventory Sheet – view sample
• Records Sheet – view sample

The Pomodoro Technique enables you to concentrate on completing tasks by assorting each of these tasks into small timeframes – each small timeframe represents one pomodoro.

1. Allocate 30 minutes for each pomodoro in which you dedicate your efforts to complete work within given fixed amount of time.
2. Remember to write each and every pomodoro for every task on a daily task list or “To Do Today Sheet” – as it is commonly addressed by the founder.
3. When the thirty minutes has passed, stop your work immediately and start to take a short five-minute break.
4. If the task requires lots of pomodoros, start taking a long 25 minutes break after the fourth pomodoro before proceeding to the fifth pomodoro.
5. Evaluate your daily tasks with total number of pomodoros used in every task and develop possible improvement steps like “How do I reduce number of pomodoros in writing a report?” or “Can I use the same number of pomodoros in other tasks in order to get the same results?”

Still couldn’t get all the steps correctly?

Download The Pomodoro Technique here and read chapter 2 – Materials and Method.

Why should we use Pomodoro Technique for our Daily Task?

This is to ensure that you will be able to focus on your work within each small timeframe and promotes less anxiety on your work because you will be able to take a short break between intervals.

This technique incites the continuity of work among individuals. Slicing your long duration task into several pomodoros is like chopping a big sausage into little small chunks of sausages and you eat of them in a hot dog eating competition. It is much easier to finish all tiny sausages than the larger one, or it’s tempted to several small tiny chunks of sausages than one hard-to-chew large sausage.

Consequently, a difficult task takes up more pomodoro than a simple task. Thus, it will be less stressful to accomplish a difficult task as you can make use of these short breaks for personal activities like taking a walk, having a tea, coffee or toilet break, talking to the phone; that can gain more energy for your work within a long period of time.

Based on Francesco, there is one thing you should take note about using Pomodoro Technique is that this timeboxing technique is only meant for goal oriented tasks. Do not use this particular technique when you are spending your leisure time on hobbies like reading, jogging, cycling and so much more activities during free time.

Update – 12/9/2009: Here’s the easiest way of learning Pomodoro Technique by Noteberg Staffan: Pomodoro Technique Illustrated: Can You Focus – Really Focus – for 25 Minutes?

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