To do list: Effective use of your little Time

Cheeky Employee

Time is the only currency we can never get back, trade, earn more of or even save.  So, since you are going to spend 24hours of your valuable time in the next day or so anyway, let’s look at what you should be spending that time on?  What gives you the most bang for your buck when it comes to time?

No, no, I won’t be telling you to live every day like it’s your last and Carpe Diem.  Today might not be your last day so we do still need to prepare for tomorrow.  I am going to list 3 ways you can make your to-do-list work for you so that you can make effective use of what little time you have today.

Delete!

So you have 50 or more items on your to-do list for the day and you know you just won’t get through everything.  This realisation starts to slowly drain your motivation and you end up opening YouTube, Social Media or even Solitaire.

Now obviously this is a big waste of time, but it is still human.  This is a way for you to remove items from your to-do-list without even having to do a thing.  Do just that, delete the things that are not essential, that are not going to help you reach any of your goals.  Focus on the tasks that mean the most.  Don’t waste your own time.

Passive Reflection:

Sometimes you just need to take a break, sleep on it or clear your head.  These are all ways to passively reflect on a problem.  This is why you sometimes get brilliant ideas in the shower or wake up with the motivation to change the world.  While you are relaxing the cogs keep turning and this is an amazing way to save yourself some time.

If you find yourself unsure of how to proceed with a task do what your teacher always said to do: Move on to the next one and get back to it.  This is light and effective procrastination.  Instead of actively thinking for an hour and 15 minutes just answer some emails or get lunch and you should have a little lightbulb popping up in no time.

Just do it!

No matter how you look at it, you are going to have to start at some point.  It doesn’t matter how much work you have left after following the two steps above, you need to start.

Just do it for 15min, okay 5?  2 minutes.  You can manage 2 minutes, right?  Well, that’s all it takes to start.  You will be amazed at how much you can achieve once you have put a dent in it.

This is the start of a series on Time Management which really started back with Fighting Laziness.  Look forward to a lot more advice on how to make every minute count.