How can I better manage my time? This is a fascinating question. Every time people ask me, “How can I better manage my time? I’m so frustrated. I’m full-time in my J-O-B while I’m part-time building my fortune through my business, and I can’t manage my time. It’s always so many people, and things to do, and people to help,” I have to actually refocus them and say, “You know what? We can’t manage time. We all have 24 hours in a day. What we do have to manage is ourselves.”
The first thing that you need to look at, if you’re having time management problems, if you’re overwhelmed and not knowing what to do and how to be more effective, is to get more clarity around what is your number one goal, because if you can do anything for yourself each and every single month, every week, or every day as you’re scheduling things in your schedule, is asking yourself one question. That question is “Which one activity or action is going to take me furthest to my goal?”. As you identify that, as you get that clarity, it will immediately become obvious that is the activity you need to be focusing on.
The other side of the equation of time management is actually cancelling a few things on your list. As we’re opening our notebook or the list of things that we have to do each and every single day, what is fascinating to me is that all of us have long lists, but the top producers and the people who are the most successful are really good at identifying maybe three to five things they’re going to get done and understanding that the rest of the things are actually not that important and are not going to take them further to achieve the primary objective that they’re after.
If you’re finding it’s hard to manage time, perhaps it’s about re-focusing and focusing on your priorities, and identifying what’s your number one goal this month, this week, or even for today, and then focusing on one activity only. You’ll find that you’ll be a lot less overwhelmed and get a lot more done at the same time.
