Well, now that I have your attention! Let’s talk about time management and how to make it work for you. I assume that being successful and reaching financial freedom is important to you? For most people they will find that difficult to achieve when they don’t have the tools to organize a busy schedule. The four big mistakes that most people make are: First, not properly scheduling their day. Second, not creating a proper task sheet. Which includes both business and personal goals. The third stumble is, not establishing their intentions. That’s from day to day, month to month, and year to year. Lastly, is a lack of balance and not creating more quality of life.
Let’s first talk schedule blocking. This is an effective and stress-free way of keeping track of your time. You’ll need to get a weekly appointment planner that has hourly input slots for each day. The concept of schedule blocking is to create a schedule around a full 24-hour day. You start with 24 hours then subtract from how long each item takes to complete. For instance, most people sleep 6 hours a day, which is nowhere near enough for me, and you take away 6 hours from your start of 24, you have 18 more to work with. Next, we need to think about work. This will vary from person to person but, the average person will spend around 8 hours at work. And that now leaves us with 10 hours of time to schedule the rest of our day. The rest is up to each person to decide what is more important to fit into those remaining hours. Now, this is where the planner comes into play. As you use this whole subtracting of hours concept, you’ll enter in all your days routines and task by time slots. This will truly help you focus on what is most important. You should allow yourself a specific amount of time for each task or leisure, like social media time or TV. Depending on what kind of career you have, 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minute at night should be fine. This is a big distraction nowadays and setting a timer will help keep you on track. On most days, my blocked schedule will include either a trip to the gym, meal prep, business task, a visit to my favorite yoga studio, or even some mid-day meditation. It’s up to you to decide what is most important, but giving each task a time slot allows you to be realistic about what can and can’t be accomplished in your day.
Now the next tool is probably my most favorite, a revolving personal and business task sheet. What I learned as a beginning entrepreneur is, there’s no way I can remember everything I need to get done in a single day. I was driving myself crazy! Trying to constantly remember everything that had to be completed. Ultimately creating high levels of stress and anxiety. Always worrying if I had forgotten to call a potential client, had I missed an important meeting, or even possibly neglected a simple but vital chiropractic appointment. A typical task sheet for me will contain task to remember like, writing my morning intentions in my life journal or finishing that continued education webinar. You can make two different task sheets. One for business and another for personal. Or you can combine them both. I recommend putting the most important items at the top of the list and the least important at the bottom. And checking them off one by one. But the secret is to stop at a specific time every day, no matter where you are on that list. This will allow enough time for you to disconnect and rest up for your day tomorrow. Whatever is not completed will roll over into the next day along with new assigned task you chosen to do. When done properly, it will help relieve high levels of stress that most of us carry every day. Remember, tomorrow is a new day and waking up well rested and a with a clear head is so much more valuable than waking up brain-dead because you were too stubborn to give it a rest and get some sleep.
Next in line is, setting your intentions! This is such a beautiful tool! It’s simple but effective in how it works with reaching short and longer-term goals. I now have a life journal that allows me to write down my intentions and the more basic goals I want to complete. The real “cherry on top” is the intentions you set for longer time frames. They should be bigger goals and you should have plans to reach them by a certain time but without it creating any anxiety or unneeded stress. You should also set monthly intentions and follow up at each month’s end to see what you have succeeded at and what you may have not. And always make sure to celebrate those successes! Go out to dinner or treat yourself to your favorite restaurant but don’t beat yourself up over the failed goals! Regroup, try to figure out why it didn’t go so well with the failures or think about what could have possibly stopped you from hitting those targets? For the longer goals, I’d recommend doing half year and annual intentions. I’ve even known some who set five and ten-year goals that they revisit each month to regroup and refocus their thoughts.
Lastly, we’ve come to the most common ball dropper of these, lack of balance. And will lead to poor quality of life. The American dream has driven countless men and women mad. They constantly run on fumes, have horrible eating habits, and even tend to ignore important relationships. All for the sake of, “The Hustle”. What good are we to society if, all we can offer is a moody brain-dead zombie with a pocket full of money? Yes, financial freedom is a good thing! But at what cost? We should want that financial plenty but, also spend more time with our friends and family too. It’s about work and home-life harmony. Make one or two days a week about you, and you alone. To refuel and recharge your batteries. Get a massage, go to the beach, or go on a stay-cation. My point is, if you take time to rest, eat well and continue to build quality relationships, your drive and quality of work will soar higher than you could ever imagine. I myself have struggled with these issues in my day to day life. Apply these skilled tactics and I promise you, you WILL reap the rewards!
