How many times have you felt like your day passed in the blink of an eye because you were overwhelmed with obligations? You feel like you were doing something all day, constantly in motion, yet realistically speaking, you actually completed very few tasks?
Take Control of Your Schedule
Perhaps it is high time you finally became the master of your own time. To start, you need to write down everything that steals your time and how much time you lose because of it. On one hand, note whether the cause is external or internal. Did you spend your time on certain activities due to pressure from others, or was it your own choice? Also, write down exactly how much time each individual activity took away from you.
| EXTERNAL | INTERNAL | TIME LOSS | |
| Phone calls (too long) | |||
| Email / Facebook | |||
| Useless chat with others | |||
| Inability to say NO to others | |||
| Procrastination | |||
| Lack of planning | |||
| Disorganized desk | |||
| Perfectionism | |||
| Traffic |
Time Thieves
We are often not even aware of how much time in a day we literally and permanently lose to unnecessary things. But now that you have written everything down and identified the causes, enter the battle against these time thieves. There are definitely some things we cannot influence, but we can change the ones that are under our control.
Frequent traps we fall into include easily allowing others to control our time; so we answer every single, even irrelevant, phone call, let ourselves be talked into countless unnecessary coffee breaks, casual chats, or we simply sometimes do not know how to say NO to certain obligations.
Remember, few of us are employed as firefighters, yet many behave as if every sudden task is a fire. Another trap is multitasking. By doing this, we are swamped with work all day, but we finish almost no task completely. Of course, if you are experiencing a creative block and see no progress on the activity you are currently working on, do not force it. Instead, switch activities and return to the previous one later.
The line that separates success from failure can be expressed in just four words: “I didn’t have time.”
