Successful people are known to be great at practicing tips on time management. Chances are, if you want to be an extremely successful professional at your chosen field, you should also learn how to organize your day effectively.
So now, you’re excited.
You’re pumped.
You can’t wait to get started and organize your day right away. There’s a tiny problem, though: Where should you start? With all the tips, techniques, and tricks scattered all over the Internet, which tips are really going to be effective and convenient for you to adapt? With all the stress and the expectations during your day, how can you even get started?
The first thing that you should take note of is the definition of time. Simply put, time is an idea that’s relative, depending on how you define it. You may think that one hour spent on writing an article is a luxury, while other writers believe that you would need to spend at least two hours to do so. You may think that fifteen minutes spent on brainstorming your ideas is already enough, while some entrepreneurs even spend three days just to brainstorm. Also, you may believe that spending time with your loved ones should be done everyday, while some people simply think it’s a waste of time!
You see, time is subjective. Your concept of time is different from other people’s idea of it. Therefore, everything that you read and learn about time management is irrelevant if you don’t believe that time needs to be managed. If you think that your time is worthless, if you’d rather watch TV all day than work on your personal growth, or if you’d rather spend all day in bed sleeping instead of trying to make a change in your life, organizing your day for success is not the answer. Focus on being inspired and pursuing your passion first.
If you think that your time is valuable, on the other hand, here are five tips to help you organize it successfully:
1. Plan your day the night before.
Before going to sleep, make sure that you’re going to start your day with a purpose. Whip up a journal or a planner and put your action plans for the next day in there.
To give you a guideline, you should have at least four plans for everyday: one should be work-related, one should be for a personal activity like an errand, and two should be for accomplishing your life dreams.
2. Schedule for interruptions.
Get frustration out of the picture by setting up time allowances in your plan. If you say that you’re going to write an article from 08:00 to 08:45 and then you’re going to write a blog post from 08:46 to 09:30, you’re just setting yourself up for trouble!
Expect that not everything will go as planned. You will only be able to organize your day successfully if you plan for interruptions.
3. Start your day with accomplishing something big.
When eating a meal, you start eating the food that you don’t like first so that you can focus on enjoying the rest of the meal, right? The same goes for your day. If you have a big thing that you need to accomplish, do it first.
This way, even if you don’t accomplish anything else, you can still say that you did something productive at least.
4. Use a time-tracking application to help you stay on track.
Of course you can still check on Facebook and Twitter — you just need to plan for it and track your time doing these activities so that you won’t get distracted.
Toggl, SlimTimer, and RescueTime are nice tools to help you get started.
5. Accept the fact that you’re not going to be able to do it all in one day.
You’re not Superman (or are you…?) so you can’t do everything in one day. Instead of working on a big project in one day and cramming it, arrange milestones instead. Don’t get frustrated if you weren’t able to finish everything you’ve planned.
Remember, you still have next time.
We hope that by that time, you’ll be wise enough to practice what you’ve read in this article and organize your day right.
