How many times have you said, “If I only had a little more time?” The “Catch 22” is that we make to-do lists to complete our tasks so we have time to rest and do the things we love but, all too often, we run out of time before our to-do list is done. This, in turn, creates more stress. Real time management holds the key to solving this dilemma.
So what are the secrets to managing your time? Most people think that time management means getting more things done in less time, but that is not the primary power of time management. The real essence of time management is doing fewer things of greater importance in less time. The trick to the first secret is in the planning of your time and being able to distinguish between what is important and what is urgent, because it is the urgent items (putting out the fires) that take up most of our valuable time.
So how can you tell if something is important versus urgent? According to Harold Taylor, time management expert, important items are those things in our lives that have value or significance or relate to our goals or mission while urgent items are those things having the appearance of requiring immediate attention. Most people are controlled by the urgent jobs even though they may not necessarily be important. When you have more things to do than you can possibly get done, you must be able to identify the important items and ignore the things that are urgent, but not necessarily important. The only way to know what is important is to have clear goals or a mission statement for your life. Without having defined what you want out of your life, you won’t be able to identify what day-to-day activities are important and should be considered high-value activities in obtaining those goals.
Simply, all to-do items fall into one of four categories (in priority order): important and urgent, important and not urgent, urgent and not important and not urgent and not important. The problem is that we usually do the items that are urgent, whether they are important or not, while the important items that are not urgent yet, are often ignored until they become urgent. Hence, the second secret: work on the important items before they become urgent and ignore the urgent items that are not important. Applying these secrets to your daily time management will reap rewards in the form of new time.
If you need professional assistance to get organized, more information or questions for The Mess Doctor, contact Barbara Ricketts at MessDoctor@Mac.com or call 661-263-0124.
