Time is one of the most precious resources we will ever encounter. We all have limited quantities of it to enjoy, but that shouldn’t make us fret! It means that every minute is a precious one. Making the most of our time doesn’t mean that we have to do memorable actions like skydiving every second of our lives - it simply means that properly managing the time we have will give us the best experience. A well-managed sports team tends to get the most wins. A well-managed restaurant has the best food. And a well-managed schedule leads to a more fulfilling life. Here are some of the best ways to keep your time in order.
Assess Your Current Schedule
One of the best ways to create a time management system that works for you is to see where you are currently spending most of your time. Writing out or drawing the approximate number of hours that you spend on daily doings like work, sleep, exercise, television, social media, and more helps us understand where the 24 hours in each day really go. Once you’ve got a more clear comprehension of where your time is being spent, you can start making slight adjustments at the beginning of each new week.
Set Boundaries
Work is important - but it doesn’t need to always be occupying your thoughts. Let your personal time be yours, and make sure you enjoy it. We can be good at our job, good in our relationships, good at giving back to our community, and so much more. We can be our best at all these things when we compartmentalize them and let each one be its own focus. It’s hard to enjoy your road trip if you’re still stressing about Excel sheets at the office. Take time and make memories.
Make Space
We can’t always control the amount of things on our schedule each day, but we can block off sections of time to more efficiently handle the tasks at hand. Approaches like time boxing and the Pomodro method provide us the blueprint to make enough space in the day to accomplish what we need to. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, just follow these already proven guidelines to make your life much easier.
Plan Ahead
Life can often feel like an opened water hydrant - a thousand tiny droplets coming at us at 100 miles an hour. This feeling is amplified when we wake up each day with no general plan except to do the best we can. Taking time each night to plan out time blocks for the next day goes a long way in reducing the stress we experience trying to accomplish all that we need to. A little work goes a long way when it comes to time.
Time is finite, but what we do with it is infinite. Manage your time better to create the good times you deserve.
Cover image by Peggy Marco
