One thing many people struggle with is time management. We live in a world controlled by deadlines, not that deadlines are wrong by any means but when we place these on every aspect of our lives we create a lot of unnecessary stress and anxiety on ourselves.
Goal setting and deadlines are a very important part of growth but these must be firstly achievable in a reasonable time frame and also broken down into stages so they seem less overwhelming.
When we ask most people in today’s world how they are, they usually come back with “I’m just so busy”, it’s like if you don’t say busy than people with think you are just lazy and not working hard or kicking goals. The problem is when you are constantly telling yourself and others how busy you are, you place more stress on the things you do need to get done, and when you are stressed you are actually much less productive, much less organised and you get much less done. You often tend to prioritise the wrong things, when life gets stressful people tend to neglect their health, they won’t exercises and they will eat badly and they will stop socialising and connecting with friends and family. The issues is you are now neglecting the 3 most important things that actually glue your life together.
Neglecting your love and connection, and your physical health severely affects your entire life in a negative way.
When I ask you what is the most important thing in your life most people say my family, my job, my dog (hehe) but this answer no matter who you are should be “Me” because if you don’t place yourself at the top of that list everything and everyone else in your life suffers.
Here are some tips to better time management
1. Keep a Diary
Sounds simple right, we all probably use one, but how well is your diary set out, it shouldn’t just be for important meetings.
My diary has almost every inch of my day planned out to a tee. Here is a little inside look into my daily diary.
- 3:30am Wake Up + Breakfast
- 4:15am Personal Training
- 12:30pm-1pm Lunch
- 1:30-2pm Emails
- 2-3pm Online Coaching – programming etc
- 3-3:30pm Content Creation
- 3:30-5pm My Training
- 5pm Walk Hulk
- 5:30-6:30pm Mobility Session with 10 mins meditation
- 6:30pm-7pm Dinner
- 7pm- 8pm Personal Development (audiobook podcast)
As you see eating and training make a start in my everyday diary they are my priorities along with mobility, meditation and personal development.
2. Set Alarms
We all say we are great at multi-tasking but it’s actually not something to brag about, our brains struggle to focus when we jump from task to task and we are much less productive if we are constantly switching our brains from one thing to the next. As you see in my diary above the times are set per task and I actually set alarms in my phone so that I only work for that amount of time on that task and then move onto the next if I am finished or not. This means I try my hardest on each task in the allocated time, rather than switching between them and getting off track and distracted.
3. Turn Off Distractions
Similar to above we are easily distracted by the outside world and it throws us off task on the important jobs we need to get done. Go into your phone settings right now and turn off all your notifications so that you have to go into your app to see anything. All I have on, on my phone is text and phone calls, all my social channels and other apps are on mute and I have to physically open them to receive messages. I even put my phone on silent and face down when I am working on tasks so I don’t have the urge to pick it up.
4. Make Time for Love and Connection
I make sure every week that I allocated time to my boyfriend, my friends and my family, I don’t neglect them to get my tasks done, because there love is what drives me to do better in my life every day, and they bring me pure joy and happiness, I don’t lose touch with the fact I need love and connection around me to make my life feel fulfilled.
5. Put Your Health First
When someone says they don’t have time to train or make healthy meals, my first thought is that they are not their
first priority. I don’t let the rest of my life get in the way of my training or my healthy eating no matter how busy I get, I don’t allow myself to take on so much that my health suffers, because if I am not healthy I cannot be good at all other aspects of my life, I am no good to myself and I am not good to others. When you put your health at the top of your “to do” list you will always come out on top.
6. Shorten Your “To Do” List
We are all guilty of having a “to do” list that continues to get longer and longer and then eventually we stop looking at it cause it’s too overwhelming. Well I am not saying ditch this list but what I am saying is to take 3 things from that list every day, write them down and tick them off, they don’t have to be huge tasks an example of mine today
- Write Blog on Time management
- Book in a massage for Friday
- Update website for programming packages
It’s 9:51am and I have almost ticked off all three apart from finishing this blog post. It about setting achievable daily goals to work towards your larger goals, our brains are wired to tick things off we love to see progress, I may not take over the world today with my three goals but I am one step closer to it, because instead of throwing in the towel thinking it’s all to hard and I have to much to do, I feel content that I got something productive done today.
You are the one that gets to choose how “BUSY” you are. Stop being “BUSY” start being organised and productive.
