Inspired Reality Blog

If you find yourself daydreaming on your job, you probably simply want to come home and enjoy life’s pleasures without having to work for them. Unfortunately, that’s not realistic for most of us, and we have to work. And when we have to work, we have to do a good job and be thorough, so we have to remain focused on what were doing. That’s not so easy, however.

Did you know that there are only 168 hours in the week? That is not a very long time at all if you think about it. A large majority of us do not get done want we would like and end up putting off until tomorrow what could be done today. That is where effective time management comes in.

Here are five tips that can help you use your time in much more effective fashion:

1. Schedule your day for everything you need to get done. Make time for work and time for play, and put it on your schedule. Follow your schedule religiously, and stick to it. Your schedule should list your priorities in the order you need to get them done. If you want to spend some time at the gym, make sure you put it on your schedule and make it a routine.

2. Before you go to bed every night, list what you are going to do the next day, starting with first thing in the morning. You can also do this right after you get up and before you start your day, but regardless, have a to do list that you follow every day and then stick with it. When you’ve got one task completed, mark it off and move down to the next thing. Keep going until you get to the very last task you need to complete. If you follow this method, you’ll rarely get behind.

3. DON’T make television, your cell phone, social websites, etc., part of your day. In other words, these things should not go on your schedule. If you get everything else done and want to play a little bit, then you can do some surfing or watch a little television. However, wait until you’ve gotten everything else complete to do this.

4. Get the “have to” things off your list first, and then put the ones that can wait until another day after those. Nobody’s superhuman, after all, and there are going to be times when you can’t get everything done on your list. Staying realistic about what you can and can’t do on a particular day is going to give you great peace of mind as well as make you more efficient.

5. Mix harder with easier tasks to keep from getting overwhelmed. If you wish, interchanging hard tasks for easy tasks and vice versa throughout the day can help keep you from getting burned out. If you have several big or difficult jobs in a row, see if you can spread them out over the course of a week. You can also make a to-do list for the entire week so that you can spread out the harder jobs on different days, including picking specific days for specific projects.

As you may have noticed, it is all about planning ahead. It is always beneficial for us to think about what complications might occur within our schedule, so just be prepared to take a detour when necessary. Other than that, planning ahead is the best way to keep your schedule intact, and your time productive.