Time Management – How to Protect your Valuable Time

Many people tend to take time management for granted and it is not hard to do at all. If we do not manage out time well though we will not accomplish our goals we originally set out to do. How many times to we set or plan to accomplish a list of goals just before the beginning of the week and then by Friday you may be lucky to have accomplished fifty percent of those goals, and this is always reoccurring week in and week out. The good news is that you can fix this issue with a few new rules and disciplines.

Identify Sources of Poor Time Management

Where are you spending your time?
Where SHOULD you spend your time?
What are your biggest obstacles to spending your time where you should?
Are you estimating your time accurately?

You can approach the aforementioned to get a better handle on time by simply categorizing and prioritizing the things that you do to reach your goals. It just takes a simple discipline, organization and a little implementation. Probably the best tool to use are some simple time management techniques in which you would place your priorities and that is where many people get sidetracked and miss their goals. Below are the four main areas of priority and if you approach your goal setting with these in mind you can instantly increase your goal attainment.

Very Important Very Urgent – (ex. IRS Tax Deadlines) these are goals that require immediate attention and cannot be put off to the future. You would think that everybody would not have any issues with this category, but when other things can and do distract you therefore upsetting the goal. Below are some things that can upset your immediate goals.

Very Important - Not Urgent - There are goals that can be done within a certain period of time but are not immediate conce
s. A good example of this type goal may be that you have to post monthly blogs on your web site, so have 30 days to get the post up.

Very Urgent – Not Important – This is where you can get sucked in by exte
al distractions, interruptions. The most common interrupters are phone calls, emails, paper clutter and visitors. This is your opportunity to be able to say “no” to all distractions including helping someone else out when your priorities are at stake. We are able to help our fellow workers when we have completed our tasks.

Not Important – Not Urgent – Sometimes we are either tempted to fill in on the golf course of serve as a companion on a long lunch break, but these long stints way from work will certainly not help you accomplish your goals.

In summary you will find that if you stick the a disciplined plan using this simple method of prioritizing your goals you will be able to increase the percentage of the goals you set to accomplish.