Your 317 Home Your 317 Home Magazine Spring 2018 | Page 14

THREE
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. Not only does a plan keep you focused and on
track, but getting it all down on 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.
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
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