...are you spending them wisely?
Time is our most precious commodity. As the saying goes: 'today is the first day of the rest of your life'....so how are you spending it?
One of the best pieces of advice I ever received and therefore one that I pass onto the people I work with on the subject of managing their time is about prioritisation. The key is to make a list....yes, yes I hear you all say: I do a 'to do' list but I never get it done. Well the answer is yes, write a 'to do' list and then take your time to prioritise that list.
Priorities should come in three guises. There are absolutely urgent & important/essential tasks that HAVE to be done today and these should be your A tasks. There are then the important but not urgent tasks that should be done today, but if they are not the world is not going to end. Finally there are the urgent but not important tasks which you need to do but do not spend loads of time doing them!! Be careful you are not wasting your time doing tasks that are not urgent and not important....you are wasting your life!!
To reduce your stress in managing ALL of those things on that 'to do' list spend 10-15 minutes every day planning what you are going to do that day. Do this in peace & quiet so that you can concentrate on what is important to you. If you do this every day and yes I mean on your days off as well, you will find yourself more in control and able to spend your 1440 minutes wisely and you will get more done and feel much better about everything!
Once you are good at managing your time you will find it easier to manage other people & delegate effectively to improve their performance and productivity....but that is for another blog!
Thanks for your time, Suzanne Unsworth
