Time Management Tips

Do you sometimes find yourself getting ready to go to sleep at the end of the day and wondering what on earth you did all day?
This is often not because you have amnesia or Alzheimer’s, but because you do not have anything to show for all the hours of the day that you were awake. In this article I’m going to give you some time-management tips that will help you to be a whole lot more productive if that is what you want to achieve.
With more and more marketers and businesses competing for your attention every single day, there are plenty of distractions to keep you from being productive. Television, Facebook, Twitter, cell-phones, magazines and food to name a few.
I’m not able to prove it, but I have spent countless hours sitting on Facebook and other social networking sites. If there was some sort of database that kept track of the time I’ve wasted I think I’d get pretty sick to the stomach. I have gained nothing from all that wasted time, and I can’t even say that it was really fun to do.
Why do we all spend hours, days and weeks of our precious lives (time that will never come back) on things that have absolutely minimal if not zero benefit?
After realizing this fact and making some changes in my life, I have discovered a simple secret to sky-rocket my productivity. Even now that I am more productive, I still have time that I spend on things that are relatively unimportant. (I’ll explain later on).

An Analytical Look At Our Day

• Fact: We all have 24 hours in our day.
• We all need to sleep (some more than others) but I think it’s safe to say that 8 hours is a good amount of time to rest our bodies and minds. This leaves us with 16 hours to get things done.
• Of those 16 hours we need to eat, drink, shower etc. which (if totally necessary) could be reduced to 30 minutes but most people will take 2 hours or more per day for these activities. This leaves us with 14 productive hours every single day.
• Our society has trained us that the norm is a 9-5 shift at work (8 hours). Add traveling to and from work (2 hours) and it leaves you with a measly 4 hours to do something for yourself or to have fun. That is not much is it?

Did you ever think about how productive most people are during that 8 hour work shift?
Many times people will be able to do the work they do in an 8 hour shift in just one or two hours if they really focused and worked.
One of the reasons for the lack of productivity is the fact that working for a boss requires you to remain present for the entire 8 hour shift. This results in employees spreading their work out accordingly, even when it could be done in a much shorter period of time.
When you work for yourself however, wasting your own time is like shooting yourself in the foot. I think it’s better to make the most of your time and get as much done as quickly as possible so that you can enjoy the rest of your day for either more work or pleasure.

Sky-Rocket Your Productivity

The easiest way to have a lot of time to be productive is by not wasting it on things that are unproductive.
I know it sounds logical but to apply this principle is not as easy as it sounds. Distractions apply to any kind of work in any environment, so if you can’t relate to my examples I am sure you can think of situations in your own circumstance. I like to give examples of being distracted in the virtual world (online) because I work on the internet from home. This means Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Email, Skype, MSN and random websites are all trying to suck me in to their little world to keep me from doing what I want to achieve.
Minutes turn into hours and before you know it, you are spending more time on these distractions than you are on your actual work. I realised this a few weeks ago and decided to implement some changes. Here is what I did:

• I deleted all social profiles (Except Facebook which I keep mainly for people who add me from my blog).
• I deleted all the people I’m following on twitter and only follow around 60 people who I have a genuine connection with. (As a result I may not be following some people I am friends with but this is not on purpose) I used to follow around 20 000 people but of course I didn’t know or care about the vast majority.
• I stopped logging into Msn messenger.
• I stopped constantly checking email and do it only once a day.
• I deleted all irrelevant Skype contacts. For example, I would chat to girls on the other side of the world on a regular basis who I might only see once every few years. I realized there is little point in it and I could put that time to better use.
• I write all my ideas and tasks down and plan my day.

The Result:

I have so much more time to be productive that I don’t know what to do with it.
Since I have made these changes, I have been writing a 1200 word article every day of the week. I have been working on my affiliate sites again and writing articles to promote them. I have time to read books and do research on subjects that are necessary for my blogging and internet marketing.
All in all, I think I’m doing double the amount of work I was before the time and I still have time to spare.

Get More Out Of Your Day

Whatever environment you work in, it is possible to be more productive by cutting out all time spent on unproductive things. I can’t tell you what those things are, but you can certainly identify them.
Why not do a little experiment to cut out those time-wasting activities and use that time and energy to focus on achieving something that you want to get done? Try it for a month since it takes 21 days for something to become a habit. If you don’t notice a change after one month then you can revert back to your old ways.

I am pretty certain that if you cut out time-wasting activities in the same way that I did that you will notice a considerable difference in your productivity.
There is another reason why this secret of cutting out time-wasting activities contributes so massively to your productivity.
When I had all the distractions I mentioned, they would be on my mind even if I wasn’t actively doing them. I would always be wondering if someone had tried to get in touch with me, made a comment on my profile or sent me an email. By removing the distractions, I also removed the potential wondering if someone had gotten in touch with me. This gave me a lot of thoughts to use on my work and my projects instead of being pre-occupied by unimportant things.