4 Time management tips that will help you make the most of 2016

Every new year thousands of people make resolution to live their lives to the full. They set goals so that they can get around doing the things that matter most to them and make vows that they'll do better in the year to come. Unfortunately, many of these people soon find themselves drowned in the demands of everyday life and many of their best intentions are soon forgotten when they fall back into the reality of just trying to get through every day doing the most important things without ever really stopping to question what the future will hold or whether they really are getting around to all the things they find important. If you're one of those people, take a look at this list below and consider whether or not some of the following things might work for you.

1. Keep a notebook with your to-do list

To some people this may sound tedious, but if you give it a try you'll soon discover why people advise this: keeping a to-do list helps you remember all the things that you want to do each day. It also helps you to break projects into bite-sized pieces by allowing you to set smaller goals for each day that eventually help you to the accomplish a bigger goal. The great thing about a to-do list is that it makes you think about what you're going to be doing and helps you to clearly keep track of whether or not you're spending your time doing the things that are most important to you. Prioritize everything on your to-do list as either important (A), average (B) or not important (C) to insure you get to doing the things that are most important to you first. By doing so, you will soon start to feel the gratification of being able to tick off things you have done from your list and seeing the progress you've made towards the things that really matter to you. Remember that setting priorities is one of the most important things you can do to help you manage your time more effectively.

Tip: Add some things to your to-do list that are easy to do and don't take much time, things that you know you're going to get to doing anyway. That way you can feel a sense of accomplishment when you get to tick it off your list. This will help to keep you motivated and not give up keeping your to-do list all together. Just remember to also add the things that take more time and really need to be done to your list as well!

2. Graph your energy to see when you work most productively

Some people are early birds while others are night owls. Graphing your energy levels throughout the day will help you establish which time of the day you are most productive, that way you can schedule tasks that require more energy during times of the day you're more likely to be functioning at your best. For your convenience, I have created a graph that you can download from here to get you started on this. In the future I hope to offer these things as PDF files, but for now a simple jpg will have to do. You probably can't really read the energy level graph at its current display size, but I can assure you, it's an energy level graph.

3. Kick the habit of procrastination

Many people might tell you to stop procrastinating like it's really easy; all you have to do is decide to not be lazy about certain things and implement a better level of self-discipline. The reality is, getting rid of procrastination in your life can be more difficult than that and require more effort, but the good news is that it isn't so difficult as to be unattainable. The first step with doing anything positive in life is to make an active choice – choose that you want to kick your bad habit. The second part is realizing that procrastination is in fact a habit, and habits must be changed in a proactive way. There are a number of actionable things you can do to help you change your habit.

Keep a journal of things you procrastinate

Keeping a journal of things you procrastinate can offer you some new insights into why you procrastinate certain things. For instance, you may find that you're in a bit of a rut with something and so you're putting it off because you don't feel like you're making progress or maybe you're a bit of a loner and you tend to put off tasks that involve human interactions (especially with strangers). Once you have an idea of why you feel hesitant to get around to doing certain things, you can diagnose where the real problem lies I.e maybe you need to look into why you're not making progress in a certain area of your life and try to come up with solutions or maybe you're suffering from some social anxiety that needs to be addressed. Subconsciously, we already know why we put off certain things, but if we decide to make a conscious effort to establish exactly why we do what we do, we can actively work on finding the solution.

Keep track of the excuses you use to justify procrastination 
Are you always too tired to get around to doing the things you procrastinate? Do you find a million other things to do if it means avoiding that one thing you don't want to do? Get an idea about the tactics you apply to procrastinate. We may think that we don't do it, but once again, our subconscious mind has a way of dictating our behaviour – unless we don't decide to take control of our minds even on a subconscious level, we will have a hard time changing anything in our lives. Once you know what things you do in order to justify your habit of procrastination, you'll be able to catch yourself red handed and decide to do something about it instead of going with the flow. Sitting in front of the TV because you don't want to make a phone call? Now you know better. Think about why you don't want to make that phone call and make a choice: Is it really necessary to do it? Would it actually be better to do it later in this case? Are you just being irrational? Is there a fear you must face? Is it even possible to do it later if you don't do it now?

4. Be realistic

While many people will want to simply dive in and suddenly have a life where they're time is perfectly managed from the moment they open their eyes in the morning to the moment they go to sleep, it is important that you don't put too much pressure on yourself or set goals that are unattainable. Don't try to follow a daily schedule that is too rigid. It will soon end up being tossed right out of your life when you find that unexpected things still come up and your schedule doesn't allow you to handle them. Give yourself at least 5 minutes between different tasks on your schedule. Some tasks may require you to schedule 10 minutes from one to the next. Allow some open time in your schedule every day for doing unexpected things that demand your attention.

Also realize that not all people are able to follow schedules, some people have lives that are too unpredictable while others simply can't flourish living according to a rigid schedule and soon grow bored; in that case, a to-do list is still your best friend because it will help you monitor your progress and set goals for yourself without causing you to race against the clock each day or lose your sense of spontaneity.

What are some techniques you've tried to manage your time more effectively? Do you have any good advice on the subject that I've missed? Please let me know in the comment below! Also, if you found this post helpful, feel free to share it with your friends on social media.

Change the way you think to start living a more organized life

Like most things with me, I have spent hours upon hours researching how to be more organized. But just because I've done that, doesn't mean I am now perfectly organized, on the contrary, I often STILL struggle with certain things. However, I have found the things that I've learned to be valuable. So if you're willing to learn more about what I think I know about this, please keep reading!

First things first – There are different things to organize

Some people may view being organized as having a good system for time management in place, while others may tend to think about their environment and physical surroundings. Truth is, there are different things that need to be organized in our lives. Below, I have made a list of the things I have found need to be organized in my own life.

#1 My psychological and emotional health

Don't neglect this! Your state of mind is what will motivate you and drive you to face all the other areas of your life that need maintenance. The worst thing that can happen if you neglect your emotional health, is you can develop depression and become suicidal. In other words, not taking your emotional needs into consideration can actually be deadly! Yes, it's that serious.

But despite this, many people don't view mental health as something they need to actively take care of in life. If you're one of those people, the first step you need to take is recognizing the importance of taking care of this area of your life. Making this mental shift can have a huge impact. An interesting thing you'll find, is that you'll lack in all other areas of organizing your life if your mental and emotional health isn't under control. Often times, managing your time and physical surroundings becomes impossible if you're blindly staring into feelings of hopelessness, sadness and lack of motivation.

The ability to control what you feel really comes down to knowing yourself well. Once you know what makes you happy and what makes you sad, you can dedicate some of your time to doing the things that help keep you positive and emotionally grounded.

#2 My physical surroundings

Of course, this is what people usually think of when they think of being organized. They want to create spaces for themselves where they know where things are without having to search for them. They want their environment to look clean and neat.

One of the things I have found to be important in organizing this area of life is the ability to think critically (and practically) about organizing things. Don't just do what looks good, do what works. Have things where it makes sense for them to be. Put things where you can easily get them when you need them and put them away again after you're done using them. Be realistic about how much “stuff” you can really have without your life becoming over-crowded with things. The fact is, it's better to have less and use all of what you have rather than to have too much and barely use any of it because you're life is a mess.

Give it some thought for a second - Are there things in your life you would use, only they're put away so deeply, just getting to them causes you to neglect them altogether? Do you have so many things (clothes, handbags, hobby related stuff etc.) you couldn't get around to using it all even if you tried? Then it's time to do some proper “stock taking” and decide what you really want and need. The rest needs to be sold, donated to charity or just plain thrown away.

I'm afraid that in this age of people wanting more all the time, the secret to managing a better environment still involves being satisfied with less.This is never the answer people want to hear, but it works.

Try to think about it like this; which if the things in your life are adding value? Are there things that you are emotionally attached to even though they're actually stealing your happiness instead of adding to it? Try to think about the things you own in terms of the actual value they add to your life and whether or not they are actually making you happier or not. The key is in prioritizing the quality of your possessions above of the quantity. Have fewer things that mean more in terms of enriching your life.

 

#3 My time

The one thing that I always remind myself of when I think of time management is this; everyone has 24 hours in a day and seven days a week - whether you're a janitor or Bill Gates, that is what you have. Makes you think, doesn't it? I mean, people don't all have the same amount of money and they don't all enjoy the same level of health, but time is the one area in which all men (and women) are basically equal (Although we don't all live equally long and some people die young, we all have 24 hours a day while we're still alive).

The reason we complain about not having time isn't actually because we don't have it. We have time, we just find ourselves spending it in ways we don't like. Our lives demand that we do certain things like washing the dishes, going to work and shopping for groceries. After doing all of the things we MUST do, we find that we don't have enough time for the things we WANT TO do. One of the first steps to improving our ability to manage our time, is realizing that our time is really a resource that we must put to use in the best way we possibly can.

In the end, what I really do, is organize my resources...

Would you flush $100 down the toilet if I asked you to? Most people will answer no. Why is that? Because even if you might not end up using that $100 in the best way you possibly could, there are much better things to do with $100 than just flushing it down the toilet. It would seem most people have an almost inherent sense of the fact that money is a resource that can be used to obtain things we want, and when we view things as resources, we don't waste them like they aren't worth anything or throw them away.

If I put $10 in an envelope, wrote a message on it like “Here's something for you, kind stranger” and I left it somewhere in a public place, someone would surely pick it up and take it for themselves. Why? It's a resource and resources are also opportunities. Even if it's just an opportunity to buy some coffee and a meal, it comes with promise. When we view other things in our life as resources, we'll realize that using them to the best of their ability, creates opportunity.

Now look think about this – do you waste your time, emotional energy, health? What if you could earn $500 an hour? Most people would like that. But in that case, your time would be worth something, right? $500 an hour, yes. Now, do you think it's sensible to waste time that could be worth $500 watching soaps on TV?...

At this point you may be thinking but my time isn't worth $500 an hour and you may be right. You may only earn $5 an hour, or whatever you're earning. But if you want your time to ever be worth more, you have to start treating it like it's worth something.

The same principle applies for anything in life. If we want things to be worth something, we must treat them like they are valuable, we must see the opportunity in them and make use of that.

This is where it all really comes together. Through the years of my life, I have become more aware of the fact that being organized really boils down to managing resources. Health, knowledge, space, money, time etc. basically our lives are made up of resources. We view these things as just being every day things, but if we start seeing everything we have as a resource, we'll begin to look at things in more productive ways.

 

Yet we spend time doing things we know are useless. We fill space with things we know are useless. We just don't always view things in terms of the value they add. Instead, we often just view things in terms of immediate gratification. We watch a television program that doesn't make us happy or teach us something useful because we feel like it. We spend money on things that just lie around our houses and make our lives messy because at that moment, we felt like it. Which should make you realize that the way you feel, is actually a resource you should try to tap into just like everything else. See your life in terms of resources and you'll realize what opportunities could be hidden in what you have.

Is there anything you would like to add to what I said? Please tell me in the comments below.