Where does the time go?

I have far too much to do and not enough time. Where has the day gone? I’ve not stopped all day but I don’t know what I’ve achieved. I feel guilty because I haven’t spent much time with my family. The long bank holiday weekend was great, but now I’ve got to do twice at much this week!

Do these sayings ring true with you? I've been looking at how we can manage our time to work efficiently and keep stress levels down.

Time Management is not about how we manage time, but how we manage and organise ourselves. Like any other skill it takes practice and repetition, until it becomes a habit.

Your own priorities, whatever they are (even the boring ones!), need focused attention. This way you are in control of your work not the other way around. The key to working efficiently, and keeping stress levels down, is to be focused. It’s that simple. What we focus our attention on is what we’ll achieve.

You can determine what you need to do each day, instead of drifting along and going with the flow. You will learn to do what you decide to do, not what you seem to end up doing.

Here’s a challenge - just before you go to bed, write down two things that you have decided to do the next day. And do them! No procrastination, no excuses, no new priorities.

It’s best to make sure these tasks are achievable, but a little stretching. They must also be relevant to your business or current goals. This does not mean that these are the only tasks you do tomorrow. But you definitely do these, as well as whatever else you are doing.

Over time you build up the difficulty and the number of tasks. When you have mastered two tasks, then two more challenging tasks, then two yet more challenging tasks, you set three tasks, then three more challenging tasks and so on. Be patient though, as doing this effectively is like building muscle. You should build gradually at a pace that is right for you.

The end goal is to get to the point where you can list all of the tasks you will do next day, knowing for sure that you will achieve them all - no matter what!

P.S. A great book for anyone who has a tendency to put things off is ‘Eat That Frog’ by Brian Tracy.