Ways to Manage Your Time Better

It's often said that social media is a competition of attention.

Tik Tok, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and many more services are at war for your attention and how to get as much of it as they can, but in reality this is the same for everything. Your family, friends, passions and hobbies. Everything in life comes with a cost, whether known or unknown.

These days it's hard to decide on what you want to spend your time on; do you focus on work, children, travel or yourself? The answer is different for everyone, but the need to be able to make a decision that aligns with your own goals is a crucial skill.

Not only is it wonderfully hard to master, it's even harder to maintain. 

In this post we will share a couple of ways to improve your time management and hopefully live a more fulfilling life. Assuming that's what you want, of course.

The first place we'll start is from a great quote “You can’t improve what you don’t measure.” Often attributed to Peter Drucker Found in Forbes. Without understanding where you currently are, you have no way to know if what you're doing is suitable. It could be that you're perfectly happy with how your life is. If that's the case, then congratulations! That's a massive achievement and you should be very proud of yourself. If you're not happy with where your life currently is and you know you'd like to improve, then that is also a wonderful position to be in because you're here and willing to make a change. And if you're just here by pure luck of the draw, then hi, great to have you here!

Measuring your time isn't necessarily about tracking everything to the millisecond but understanding in broad strokes where you are and what you do in a day, week or month.

I find the best way to do this is by using a 24 hour pie chart, which you can either download or print off here. Once you have your chart you can begin segmenting your day. The first thing to do is write the numbers 1-24 around the outside and consider that your day. Obviously your time can differ day-to-day but this is a good place to start improving your time management skills. Once you have the numbers written up, always "pay yourself first". These are all the essentials: sleep, eat, shower, etc. Block those sections off - they don't need to be a full hour so feel free to complete as you see fit.

Once you have "paid yourself first," you should then block out sections of your day to complete what needs to get done. This could be work, responsibilities, social events, etc. Whatever you need to do to ensure your life either remains on course, or improves. Once this is done, the rest is all your free time that you have in the day. If you get to this point and have no free time, you should really consider dropping something. Honestly I don't know your personal story or what you're doing but if your day is full from just this section, it's important that you take a long hard look at what you're doing and ask "is this healthy for me?", "is this something I can sustain?" and "do all of these things really need to be here?"

It's not going to be easy to cut things out but if you want to live a more fulfilled, content life, it's important to learn to say no. I understand this can be more easily said than done, but it'll pay you back ten-fold when you do.

Finally you have the rest: your personal time, your relaxing time, your hobbies etc. If you get to this point and don't have anything to add, that's okay. This isn't a test in cramming everything in all at once, it's about progressive improvement. I want you to have some time to kick back and rest, relax and let go of that ever present hum to be active. Those problems you have will be there tomorrow, those difficulties will come back. If you take time for yourself and look after you first, you'll find most of those issues fall by the wayside and you become less affected by them.

We began by talking about attention and how everything is competing for yours, so I want to thank you for the attention you've given here. I hope you were able to take a sliver of useful information away from this and I hope it'll help you manage your time better.

If it does and life becomes easier, then I hope you use that to help others and enjoy life a little more.

Thanks for reading and good luck with your time management.

Image Credit: Corporate Finance Institute