Are you making as much progress in your life as you would like to?
The speed of progress in people is vastly different. Some people set goals and bank them in a month, while others set goals and dream about them for 10 years. What is the difference?
How much time do you have in a day? How much time do you have in a week? Interestingly, we only have as much time as we make use of.
Every moment of every day, the world around us is desperately trying to take us off track – distractions, demands and newspapers constantly derail us if we are not careful about what we focus on.
One of the most powerful paradigm shifts we can make is to look at time like stock which we can either invest or waste. We all get 24 hours in a day to invest into building our futures.
Every hour that you invest intentionally and strategically into a long term plan, you keep forever. Every good hour that you invest into taking big action at work, making big decisions, writing a powerful strategy, exercising, spending time with your family, sleeping…..makes tomorrow slightly better and you can imagine your future self smiling down at you, thanking you.
To invest your time wisely requires Self Leadership, Self Management and Self Application.
Here are 5 Tactics you can use to help you to Invest Your Time Wisely so that you make the progress you need to make to achieve your goals:
- Plan each day before it starts – every day you have the opportunity to get yourself closer to where you want to be in all areas of life. By planning your day and consciously choosing how you are going to “invest” each hour, you are far less likely to get derailed by outside influences – this is self leadership.
- Schedule when you will do your most important tasks and treat them like the most important meeting of the day – do not let anyone take this time from you – this is self management. Our focus is sharpest earlier in the day. Treat your 8am to 12pm like gold – invest this time into the big tasks that need to be done, don’t waste it on irrelevant activities like reading the newspaper, scrolling through social media or idle chit chat with colleagues.
- Give yourself a time limits – a time limit to complete a tasks, say 1 hour, a time limit to check your emails, say 30 minutes twice a day, a time to leave work – then manage yourself and your distractions strictly so that you stick to these time limits
- Manage your Distractions – ask yourself constantly….” Is this the best use of my time?” – manage your thinking and your actions effectively so that you stick to your plan. Say NO to things that are not important and don’t fall into your plan. Speak to your interrupters politely and let the know that you are free at lunch time or after 3 unless there is a crisis. Practice the 10foot rule with your phone – when you have something important to work on, put your phone 10 feet away from you, upside down on silent so you cant reach it. Keep your emails closed and only check the at scheduled times in the day.
- Focus – on one thing at a time and “get it done” – practice the philosophy of “Don’t get it perfect, just get it done”