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Time Management

As most bloggers know, time is money. For me, it’s no different. My work weeks are very busy. It’s almost a science for me to schedule real Life work for two part time jobs, Freelance work, meeting with clients, advertisement outside of the web, meeting with clients, blogging time, personal time with the wife, school, working out, and a social life. After several months of struggling, for the New Year, I decided it was time to start over, get things sorted out, and be more productive.

Tip 1:

Get a schedule! I can not stress this enough. If you do not have a schedule and stick to it, you will fail. For over a year I have been working a part time job and doing freelance whenever I could the work. At first this was easy, I only worked several times a week and could schedule around a set schedule. But as time went on, things got a bit busier and I had a hard time remembering appointments (mostly personal, never work related).

About two months ago I started using a day planner, pda, and outlook calendar to set my work schedule. This seemed to work for me. But I did not schedule time for school, personal, and social time. I still had issues with finding enough waking hours to get my work completed. I was averaging about three to four hours of sleep and it was tearing me up.

So last week I started to schedule in everything. I schedule everything I do from the time I get up in the morning to the time go to bed. I plan this out weekly. Everything is open to adjustment, but if an adjustment has to be made I fix it as soon as I get home. I am still adjusting this schedule, but so far, I seem to be getting more sleep and my productivity levels are rising.

The reason I use multiple ways to schedule my life is for several reasons. The first reason is, the more I look at my schedule, the easier it is for me to understand and remember what I have to do on any given day of the week. Second, I can not carry a day planner everywhere I go. The planner mostly stays at home at my desk, so my wife can check my schedule or add things to it as needed. I carry my pda almost everywhere I go. Some will say, if you have smartphone or a Blackberry, I can have all my information in there and not carry a pda. That works as well. But I tend to loose my phones. I do keep my life in my smartphone, but that is only a backup. The reason I carry the pda is I almost never take it out unless I am updating, or turning off an alarm. Once I am done with it, it goes back on the built clip or sits in the cradle on my desk. Using this system, I almost never misplace my pda. At the end of the day, I sync my devices, update my planner, and back up everything. This works great for me, but for others, this may not work.

Tip 2:

Stop playing those stupid Facebook App games. One of the easiest ways to burn up a time is playing games on Facebook or other social media sites. If you must play those games schedule accordingly and never spend more than 30 minutes a day on it. If you need more time, try playing during your lunch time or your scheduled break time. But NEVER sacrifice your work, social life or family life to play these stupid, useless waste of time games. I use to play these games all the time. I use to spend several hours a day playing. I would spend about an hour in the morning and then several in the evening. After a while, I slowed it down to about 30 minutes a day. Now I almost never play. I choose to spend my free time with my wife, real life friends, blogging, and playing video games. As for video games, I rarely get to play these. I love video games and miss them, but I simply do not have the time anymore. If do get the time, I generally head over to a friends house play multiplayer games or check out what they purchased.

Tip 3:

Get off the couch and turn off the television! Another easy to waste time is getting to comfortable on a couch while the TV is on. Sitting on the couch is not that big of deal, if the TV on, you can distracted, next thing you know, you burned up two hours of your work day. So leave the TV off and get off the couch. The couch should only be used if you are working late and you are spending time with the family after your normal work hours. For me, the couch is to tempting. Early in the morning, I sit on the couch only to check my email and work on non related work items. If I stay on the couch to long I get tired quickly and I get tempted to take a nap that could lead to half the day wasted.

Tip 4:

Do not do work in the bed. Working in the bed or near bed might seem like a good idea, but its not. If you spend time working in the bed during the work day, the brain associate’s places by what it used to. The brain thinks that when you are in bed, the body should be sleeping or preparing to sleep. If you work from the bed, stop it. This is can slow you productivity down, and even tire you out. If you have an office that is also a guest bedroom, you should either move your office or move your bed to another room if it is possible. Just having the bed in the room, can be distraction that can be costly.

Tip 5:

Organize your workspace. Studies have shown that people that have a cluttered work area is less productive than those that are neat and have a well organized work area. I truly believe this theory; I generally have a cluttered work area. At first of the year, I organized my office to be more productive and get rid of useless junk. In the few weeks that I have kept organized I have seen an increased level of productivity. When the area gets cluttered, I get less productive. When this happens, I noticed I spend more time looking for documents and other items when they are not put away in their proper spaces and less time when everything is put away and well organized. Also noticed that I tend to get tired easier and annoyed a lot faster. So I try and clean up my office at the end of each work day and at the end of the week I clean up and get rid of anything that I do not need.

What do you do for time management?

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