Atlas Insurance Magazine Atlas Insurance Risk & Business Summer 2018 | Page 14

TIME MANAGEMENT BY: GARY KELLER, AUTHOR, FOUNDER, KELLER WILLIAMS REALTY BY: JAY PAPASON, CO-AUTHOR, MILLIONAIRE REAL ESTATE 3 Ways To Find More Time In Your Day T ime is our most precious resource and we all need to be intentional about how we spend it. It’s too easy with all the devices, social media, and constant streams of information to fall victim to time-wasting traps that prevent us from accomplishing our most important work. If you’re not a natural time management pro, don’t worry. Time management is a learned skill, not a born talent. Here are three easy ways you can identify or manage the worst time-wasters in your life, and win back precious time throughout your day. 1. PLAN AND PRIORITIZE When you know you’ve got a busy day (or week) ahead of you, it’s important to have a clear plan for what you need to achieve. 14 Not only does a plan keep you focused and on track, but getting it all down paper can remove the sense of being overwhelmed or not knowing where to start. This is why we recommend time-blocking, and using your 66-Day Calendar to map the most important things to focus on (the1thing. com/resources/66-day-calendar/). On Friday afternoons or Sundays, sit down and think about your big goals for this year. What do you want to achieve, both personally and professionally? With those longer-term goals in mind, you can work backwards to figure out what you need to do this month to get there, and then what you need to do in the next week. Once you’ve identified the three ‘Big Rocks’ for the week ahead, you can plan out your schedule (and you can use this system to develop a routine that will work for your specific situation). 2. WORKING? WORK. RESTING? REST It happens to the best of us: we’re in the middle of a scheduled work block, and then, barely even registering that we’re doing it, we click open a new tab to check in on Facebook or email. We open the news, Twitter, or forums that we like, compulsively refreshing them — and losing our focus on the work we were doing. Once you’ve identified the traps you usually fall into, you can take preventative measures to keep yourself out of them. Put your phone away during work hours so you’re not tempted to check it and utilize programs like Cold Turkey that will block distracting websites from your computer for as long as you need to get work done. Build your Bunker, collecting everything you will need (snacks, water,