Better Time Management Using the Peapod Principle

Here are five ways to more effective time management.

· Determine your goals and priorities

Knowing what you want is the first step to accomplishing more. First decide what goals you want to pursue, be it short term or long term goals. Then rank them in order of priorities and start to manage your activities around them. Planning and prioritizing may be a small step you have to take every time but the benefits of this small step is significant in helping you to accomplish more.

Once your priorities are set, it helps you to mange your daily decisions better. You will end up saving more time doing the things that will bring you towards your goals instead of spending time thinking and deliberating.

· Time management is about getting results

Time management is about getting results. Most people confuse activity for results. For instance if you are making 200 calls but not getting any sales, then you are involved in activity. For getting sales is what you get paid to do and the better approach may be to tweak your sales call approach to get better results.

Thoroughly planning and having a set of things to do each day in your key areas of life and tracking the results you have achieved will give you a better indication of how well you are managing your time for results.

· Tracking your daily activities

Granted, what gets measured improves. 80% of the tasks contribute to 20% of the results and vice versa. In order to find out where your time has gone, you need to track how you are spending time now. Try to track every activity you have two weeks and you will begin to see where you are wasting time on activities that do not bring you closer to your goals. You may for instance be spending the first hour or two in the office checking your emails and end up surfing the Internet for the next hour, spending 3 hours on a task that would normally take a fraction of the time. So if you do not track your time, you are never going to be able to tell.

· Learn to say "No".

This is tough for some people. Some people find it difficult to refuse the request of others, thinking they will not be well liked if they refuse to do certain things when asked. Well learning to say "No" can help you accomplish more and feel less stressed. You will be in a better position to help others once you have completed your tasks. Instead of spending time helping others at your own expense, you may end up doing a shoddy job when you are hard pressed for time. So learn to say "No" to accomplish more.

· Get started immediately

Stop procrastinating and get started on tasks immediately and will be able to accomplish more. By attending to the necessary tasks early you can also eliminate last minute deadline stress.

The minute you decide to integrate better time management skills into your life, you have already opened up options for better life management. Once you begin to manage your time better, you have more time to plan personal development activities that will contribute towards your growth.

Cindy Siow is the owner of the website MyFirstMagicButton.
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