Time Management Mastery

Time Management in a Nutshell

The Basics of Taking Control of Your Time

If you want to focus your attention on developing one aspect of your life, you should start with time management. With excellent time management skills, you'll be able to get more done in less time, leaving you the opportunity to develop other areas of your life.

Time management is a general term for a series of habits that allow you to complete your goals within a certain time frame. Since time management is not related to a particular field (like weight loss, business or organizing) developing your time management habits is time well spent.

If you learn time management skills in the context of getting work done, for example, you can easily transfer those skills to other goals in your life. No matter how you choose to learn time management, you can be sure that your skills can be applied to any other situation in your life.
Time is a Precious Resource


You can always make more money, get more friends or learn more skills. One thing you can never get more of is time. Time cannot be saved and used at a later date. Everyone, whether they live on a small island in the South Pacific or a large bustling city in Europe, has the same 24 hours per day.

Most people feel like there is not enough time during the day. They feel like the sand is always running through the hour glass and slipping through their fingers. But there are other people in their same exact circumstances who manage to achieve their goals. What makes the difference?
The difference is in how the second group of people manages their time.

Time management is really about achieving goals. Everyone sets goals but hardly anyone achieves them because they don't have the right time management habits. Time management habits help you get what you want out of life. Imagine...with the proper time management skills you can fix your finances, improve your relationships, lose weight, increase your health, reduce stress and live the life you've always wanted to live.


Time Management Traps

Identifying Your Personal Time Management Problems

Effective time management is only possible when you can identify and eliminate the obstacles to your goals. There are several common problems that people have with managing their time.

The most common problems with time management are:

o Lack of focus

o Procrastination

o Unrealistic expectations

These problems are at the crux of most people's time management difficulties. Solving these problems can help you work more efficiently and set yourself up for success to reach your goals. Let's look at each of them individually so you can identify which ones you need to focus on.
Lack of Focus

Reaching your goals requires an extreme level focus on what you want to accomplish. You need to have a clear picture of what you desire to achieve and, more importantly, why you want to achieve those goals.

If you're not focused on the task at hand, you'll end up letting your mind wander. You'll get involved in another project or, even worse, you'll end up wasting the time that you need to spend on your work doing something else. When the time comes to finish your project, you'll end up scrambling around trying to get things done.

Lack of focus, and all the problems with time management really, result in not putting forth your best work. If you are working on a project for work, it's going to be poor quality if you turn it in at the last minute. The same goes for working on a report for school or for managing your time when you are trying to lose weight. If you can't focus on your goals, you're going to find them drifting further and further away from you.

Let's face it. The average person has a lot going on in their daily life. It's naive to think in this day and age that you can go through life only focused on one task at hand. That's why it's so important to be able to focus on your goal when you are in the moment. You must be able to switch gears so you can move easily between your task and the rest of your life.

A big part of maintaining focus is knowing why you want to accomplish what you want to accomplish. If you have no clear reason for why you want to get the goal accomplished, beyond simply knowing it needs to be done, you won't be able to focus on it sufficiently. Later in the lesson we'll go into how to develop focus so you can meet your goals.
Procrastination

When you procrastinate, you know exactly why you need to accomplish your goal. You even know the steps that you need to take. However, you end up putting off your work because you don't want to do it in that particular moment. You put it off until the pain of not doing it is greater than the pain of doing it.

If you're a procrastinator, you know that you are an expert at weaseling your way out of every situation. You're the type of person that thinks they can't work without the exact right temperature in the room, a fresh glass of water and the perfect amount of light. You'll tweak your environment so much to "be productive" that you'll end up avoiding work entirely.

Procrastination and lack of focus can often go hand in hand, however there are subtle differences. Lack of focus can be a tool of procrastinators. You can make yourself easily distracted so that you'll avoid the pain of working.

However, if you're a procrastinator simply "gaining focus" isn't going to help you get back on track. Procrastination has less to do with focus and more to do with fear. When you procrastinate, you are actually coming from a place of fear rather than a place of empowerment.

When you put off your work today, you're avoiding the pain of accomplishing the work. In some instances, there may really be pain involved. People who need to lose weight may procrastinate about working out because it is physically hard. However, in most cases the pain is psychological.

Once you identify what is causing you pain, you'll be able to re-wire your brain so that you can use pleasure as a motivator instead of pain. Later on in this lesson, we'll break down the basics of procrastination and give you tools to bust through this time management killer.
Unrealistic Expectations

Finally, another major issue with time management is unrealistic expectations. You may know exactly why you need to accomplish your goals and you may be very motivated to take action to achieve those goals. You will take action and get it done...but you don't leave yourself enough time to get what you want.

When you set unrealistic expectations for yourself, you're planning to fail instead of planning to succeed. You're setting the bar so high that there is no possible way you'd reach them. Setting unrealistic expectations comes from a good place...you want to imagine a situation where your time is used efficiently.

While it would be great to get a pay per click marketing campaign set up in thirty minutes, it's just not going to happen. Everyone who wants to lose weight wishes that it only took ten days to lose fifty pounds, but that's not the reality.

Some people avoid reality because they are overconfident in their abilities to reach their goals. Others may be using unrealistic expectations as a tool for procrastination. However, the real center of unrealistic expectations is a disconnection from productivity tools. If you feel like your work is taking too long, you can use the tips later on in this lesson to be able to squeeze more into your day. Getting organized and staying in tune with your tasks will help you overcome unrealistic expectations and manage your time efficiently.