It's Time to Manage your Time!

Summary

Everyone has the same 1440 minutes in a day. You cannot go out and buy more time whenever you please. Time management is not about how you can procure more time, but rather about what task you decide to fill your time with. A person becomes successful by focusing on task that benefits themselves.

What is Time Management?

• As stated above, everyone shares the same 1440 minutes each day. Time management is what you decide to do with said time
• Managing ones time directly correlates to managing ones task, how you fill up your time is how you manage it
• When planning your schedule you must prioritize your task in order of most dire to least important
• Stephen Covey's Time Management Matrix is a great way to lay out the importance of your task
• Return On Time Invested-before starting a task ask yourself, does it need to get done? If not ignore or eliminate the task. Then decide if the task can be automated. If it cant be automated can it be delegated? If it cant be delegated can it be procrastinated? If it doesn't meet any of these then it must be completed now.

Time Management Life Hacks

• Use a calendar
• Own your day, follow intention not impulse
• sleep 7-8 hours
• Exercise and eat healthy
• Devote your entire focus to the task at hand
• Get an early start
• Do not let unimportant details hold you back
• Turn essential task into habits
• Batch related task together
• Turn off email notifications
• Learn to say "NO"

[ The following is the full transcript from this week's post. This is a health blog with a focus on weight loss. Please consider that all episodes are unscripted, direct to camera, with focused talking points. ]

I want you to do me a favor. Think of someone that you define as being very successful. Some popular options would be Oprah, Winfrey, Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, whoever it is, but you have defined this person as someone who is very successful.

Now, what do you think they have in common with you and me? One thing they have in common is, we all have 1440 minutes in a day.

Today, I want to talk to you about time management and the central components that come with time management.

How can we manage our time, so that we are actually being successful?

The first thing to understand is we do not manage time, we manage tasks. Since we all have the same 1440 minutes in a day, it is how we are using said time to determines our success.

How do we prioritize our tasks that we are working on, are we working on the right things? And then are there things we can do to be efficient working on those things?

One of the ways that that is often touted is something called the time management matrix that Stephen Covey presented to the world. If you think of it, his matrix is basically a four-quadrant matrix, where on long the left side you have what is basically not important and important. And across the top, you have urgent, then not urgent.

If you think about things that are both important and urgent, these are things that need to get done and be done right now. These are kind of the essential things you need to be working on. If you actually think about things that you're working on, mostly, they probably fall into the urgent, but not important, such as e-mails.

Then if you think about, what are the things in the long term, in your life that are important. Often, they fall into the quadrant or the second quadrant of important, but not urgent. Those things often get neglected, and it is important to understand this because the driver here is the urgency. And if you do not have a sense of urgency, often we are not working on those things. However, the things that are most important to us, often fall into that bucket of non-urgent. So, they get neglected.

It is important to understand that. If you look at time with the concepts of this matrix, you are really learning how to prioritize things. But the thing is, is you are not creating time. You are just prioritizing, you have to take things and move around, and you're going to give up time and different aspects of your life.

Is there a way you can actually create time?

Well, there is. When you look at these tasks, I want you to look at them in the concept of what I call return on investment or return on time investment.

Let us say you have a task that needs to get accomplished. I want you to have a thought process when you think of these tasks. First, is it a task that needs to be done? Have you really just told yourself a story, that this is something that needs to get done, and the reality of it is you can just ignore it or eliminate your life? There probably is not quite a few of these tasks, identify them, and get rid of them.

The next thing I want you to do is if the tasks you are thinking about does not fall into this elimination. Then I want you to think about, can you automate it? A good example of that is how much time you spend paying bills. If you set up auto bill pay, you basically have automated that task. That is freeing up time for you to focus on things.

So, think of it as, is there a way I can invest to automate things?

Will it be able to get done? There are important things that still need to get done, but do not have to be done by you.

And think, is there a way to automate these task.

If you cannot automate them. Then I want you to think about imperfection. What I mean by that is, often we are unwilling to give up a task because we think I can do it better than someone else. And the probably is some truth to that. However, eventually if we delegate those tasks these other people will get just as good at it as us.

You have to accept some imperfection and delegate things.

Now, often people look at this as, is it was just easier for me to do this task, than to train someone else to do it? And if you are looking at it from that concept of just today, how much time I'm spending, you are correct. But If you have a task, that takes you 10 minutes a day, every day, and you can train someone, and it takes a couple of hours to train them.

If you do the math, and you find out there is some immense time saving. So, think about your task, is it a task you can delegate someone else?

Next thing is, is the task is ready, or not ready to be attacked yet. Meaning it is important, but the time is just not right.

Then what you do is you basically say, "I am going to procrastinate." It's okay to procrastinate, because what you are going to do is you're going to put that task to the side, and you're going to come back at a later date, and you're going to run it through this funnel again. Eventually the funnel will either become something like, “You know what, I've done this one thousand times, this never gets done, And it seems to be okay, the life goes on, and I've never done this task. So, I am going to eliminate it, or I may figure out a way to automate it, or I may be able to find a way to delegate.”

But if it is something you cannot really just procrastinate and needing to get done, then it's time to focus and get the task accomplished.

So, this is a task you cannot eliminate. You cannot automate. You cannot delegate. You cannot procrastinate, and so it needs to get done, only you can do it.

You need to focus now. This is not the time to say, “Okay, I can multitask.” You want to just bear down and get the task done. Focus on this task to get it accomplished.

What are some things we can do that can help us be more successful in managing these tasks?

I call them life hacks and time management. But remember, time management really is task management.

The first thing you do is use a calendar. You can tell so much about an individual by simply saying, “Let me see your calendar.”

If someone shows me their calendar and it is blank. I know they are not very successful.

It is simple, if you are not planning how you're going to approach life, the life is going to basically plan it for you.

And life is not interested in your success.

If you want to manage time, you have got to use a calendar, whether it be a digital electronic calendar, or the good old-fashioned paper calendar. It is up to you. But you have got to use a calendar and schedule out your task and your day so that you are being efficient in the time that you have been given.

Next thing is you need a what I call run the day. What that means is, in the beginning of the day, you look at your calendar and go, “What are the things on here that I have to get done? Are there things on here that I don't need to do, that I can take off my calendar?”

You need to own the day and make sure if it's on your calendar, it is important and needs to get done, and then get it done.

Own your day.

The next thing is sleep, exercise and eating healthy. It is very important to get 7 to 8 hours of sleep, you exercise regularly, and that you have a healthy diet. This is so important in time management because it is about efficiency.

Being well rested and well fed. You are going to have the mental capacity to be more efficient. Meaning you are going to be able to complete these tasks quicker.

So, you get that task that you know you have got to focus on, in order to get it done. If you are well rested and well fed, you are going to be able to accomplish that task quicker. Also, you are going to make better decisions.

So, when you run the day, you're actually using the process, you're actually to make better decisions on what it is that you need to do, and do when, and what you can eliminate.

Next thing is, get an early start. You can accomplish so much in the morning. If you have important tasks that you want to get done, we all know that those things can pile up at the end of the day. There are so many the interference's in life that it is really hard to be successful.

If you really want to accomplish things, get up early and get those things done right away. You are not distracted, you are well rested, and you can provide the mental focus needed to get it done efficiently.

The next thing is do not get bogged down on the details. It is very easy to just say, “Oh, I need this and that. All these details, I don't really have a hand.” It is really easy to tell yourself, that this can't move forward yet, it can really slow you down.

Act upon the information you have.

Do not get bogged down on details.

Another thing you do is turn your tasks into your habits. So, back to working out, to be efficient, there's simple thing you can do, and it is always work out at the same time. That is going to create these habits with your body. Just kind of pop out of bed knowing it is time to go work out. And you are not putting any thought process into this, and it basically creates a method of being more efficient.

Another thing you can do is batch common tasks. If you have certain things you need to do, and you are in the mindset of doing them, it is important to do them all at the same time. If you end up having to pay your bills, do you pay one bill and then go about your day and do another bill later? No, it is much more efficient with your time to actually batch things together.

Now, the last two I will discuss with you are probably two of the biggest things you can do right now, that is going to have the biggest impact on your life and your time management.

Turn off e-mail notification.

Do not have notifications on your phone, notifications on e-mail, all that is, is someone else saying, “I've got a problem I need you to address.” So, turn those things off because all that does is distract from you, and re changes your focus to work on someone else's tasks. And if you really want to be efficient and successful, you have got to always be focused on what is important to you.

So, turn off your notifications.

The next thing is learn to say no. Often we want to be people pleasers, and so we tell people, yes. We agree to things without really thinking them through. We often regret that we have done that, but we are committed to it now.

The important thing to do is to learn to say no. Meaning that you are not going to accept tasks that are not important to you. They may be important for someone else, but they are not important to you.

These are two big things you can do right now.

Turn off your notifications.

Learn to say, No.

They are just going to have a tremendous impact on your time management.

Remember, it is really simple.

You can run the day, or the day is going to run you.

Either way, someone or something, is managing time. And that can be you or the world.

But remember, the world is not interested in your success.

If you really want to be successful, you need to manage your time, which means you need to manage your tasks.

If you want to learn more, feel free to follow us.

Thank you.

Kelly Cox MD, FACEP

Member, American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine

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