What does your day-to-day life look like? Are you constantly stressed out because you don’t have enough time to get everything done? While it’s true that you can never have enough time.
You can actually maximize the time you do have available in order to get more done without feeling like you’re constantly trying to catch up or skimping on what really matters most. Here are 7 practical ways you can maximize your time in life and make the most of the limited hours each day has to offer.
1. Understand what is important
For most of us, life is full and frenetic. Finding ways to slow down and focus on what’s important is sometimes easier said than done. One strategy I recommend people try is The Life Audit. Write a list of activities that consume your time: family, friends, hobbies, work… anything. Review each one and ask yourself two questions:
1) Is it important? 2) Is it contributing to my life positively? If you answered no to either question, consider re-prioritizing or eliminating from your daily routine entirely. This gives you more time for things that are truly important and meaningful — and I bet you’ll be surprised by how much better you feel as a result!
Before you can do more, you have to know what’s important. Ask yourself: what is most important to me? What matters? Once you have a better sense of your values and priorities, make time for them — whatever they are. This is a life lesson that should never be forgotten or underestimated.
Writing down what’s important to you is a life lesson that should be taught in high school. Once you write down your top priorities and goals, it will help clarify where you should spend your time and energy.
Without having clarity on what’s important, it can be easy to feel like there’s never enough time in a day and become burned out. Understanding what is important also helps you say no to less-important activities or obligations — another way to maximize time.
2. Prioritize your tasks
Another time-management strategy is to stop wasting time on things that aren’t important. Before you sit down to work, make a list of everything you have to do, and then sort your tasks by importance. Doing so will help you spend more time on what needs to get done versus what’s just important in theory.
For example, while some people might consider it important to clean their desks every day, chances are they won’t get much done unless they approach cleaning like any other task and find a way to maximize their effort (e.g., save the cleaning for before or after lunch).
Prioritizing tasks is an important life lesson that can be applied across all areas of your life. Life is short, and there are limited hours in a day. We need to learn how to prioritize our tasks in order to maximize our productivity. Here are 7 ways you can do just that
make a list of everything you have to do in a day, week, or month. Start with your most important tasks and work your way down. Even if you can’t get to everything at once, knowing which things are most important will give you direction and focus as you go through your day.
Prioritizing is one of life’s biggest challenges, but by taking time, to be honest about what needs to be done and making it a priority, you’ll start making more efficient use of your available time. In fact, prioritizing is so important that there’s no better way to prioritize than starting with it first thing in the morning before anything else gets in the way.
3. Ask yourself, What’s most valuable right now?
Ask yourself what’s most valuable right now, and then put your time there. How do you decide? Look at where you feel you can add the most value or contribute most to others. Are you a doctor with an extra hour every day that could be spent teaching a third-year resident how to perform new surgical techniques?
Could you write a few more articles each week that will help educate your audience? Are there opportunities for creating more systems within your organization that would allow others to work faster and more efficiently?
Understanding where we have more capacity is often more important than figuring out what we’re best at. If I have an hour available today, but I only know how to make sushi rolls, I may not actually be adding much value by filling it by making sushi.
A common life lesson is to learn what’s important and ignore everything else. That’s easier said than done, however, because we all have a lot of responsibilities and obligations in our lives — and it can be difficult to narrow things down. To help us figure out what’s most valuable right now, ask yourself: What’s most valuable for me to do? What am I best at doing?
There are 168 hours in a week. While some will be devoted to sleeping, eating, and personal time, there is still quite a bit of free time — if you can figure out how to use it more productively.
Most people are using their available time in a way that may not be bringing them what they want in life, says Astrid Gehrig, MBA, professional organizer and founder of Red Light Properties LLC.
In other words: if you aren’t doing what’s most valuable at any given moment, you’re probably wasting some amount of your 168 hours. We asked top career coach Gehrig for advice on how to make sure that doesn’t happen — and how to get more out of our limited supply of time.
4. Focus on doing one thing at a time,
multitasking is a myth, and it can actually make you less productive. While it’s true that some people can focus on multiple tasks at once, for most of us, trying to work on two things at once isn’t just distracting, it’s also downright counterproductive.
Give your full attention to one task at a time; you might be surprised by how much more you get done with less effort. Set your priorities: Doing everything just because it needs to be done will only add unnecessary stress to your day.
Multitasking is a myth. When we try to focus on two things at once, our brains end up switching between tasks so quickly that neither gets all of our attention. Instead, most of us do a disservice to both tasks by spreading our attention too thin. To perform each task at a high level, stick with one until it’s done before moving on to the next task.
Not only will you get more done in less time, but you’ll also improve your performance in each activity. And if you have a hard time staying focused? Try developing mindfulness (which can be trained using simple meditation practices) or learn stress management strategies.
When you’re working on a project, say writing an essay for school or making a business presentation for work, focus only on that one task. Trying to do too many things at once can result in distractions, taking your mind off of your original task. It might also cause you to feel overwhelmed and unfocused.
5. Get rid of distractions
We all have them — whether it’s social media, news sites, TV or that loud co-worker who just won’t stop talking. Whatever your poison is, it’s holding you back from accomplishing more in a day. Block those websites when you know you need to get something done, or even better — limit your internet access while working.
If you need to stay off social media while working, try out sites like Self Control (Mac) and Cold Turkey (Windows). After choosing an amount of time to block yourself for (say an hour), these tools will take care of everything else — even telling friends/family that they can reach you via email only.
One of my first jobs was with a lawyer. I worked in his home office, and if he wasn’t at his desk working, he’d be doing something else like watching TV or reading magazines. He didn’t realize it, but those distractions were costing him work time. A lot of work time.
Once you understand what to focus on, it’s time to make sure that your personal and professional life is in sync. If you’re working too many hours at a job that isn’t meaningful, or trying to do too much else at once, you may find yourself complaining about not having enough time.
This can be resolved by focusing solely on your job and ignoring all other distractions until a set period of time is over. For example, if you have a project due in one week, don’t check your email for one hour every day until then; just work on your project.
6. Delegate where appropriate
When you’re under pressure to do more in less time, it’s tempting to be a one-man-band. But delegating tasks and projects can free up your schedule for things that only you can do — and when you don’t do them, it holds up your ability to move forward with other tasks. Need help deciding which tasks are good candidates for delegation?
Ask yourself: Is there someone else who could do it faster or better? Are they already doing something similar? Would it save me time if I delegated it? For example.
If you have an assistant, ask her to handle routine correspondence so that your biggest problems become her biggest problems. And don’t just delegate one thing at a time; as soon as something is done on your list, delegate another task right away.
It’s easy to think that something is too small or unimportant to delegate. As we’ve already covered, you can get a surprising amount of work done by delegating little jobs.
When you start making lists of tasks for yourself, then prioritize them and pick out those which are truly important and don’t need to be done personally. Get someone else to do it — free up your time for more important matters.
It’s impossible to do everything yourself. This can sound like an obvious statement, but it isn’t as common in practice. Some people think they need to oversee every aspect of their business and hiring a team means someone else will be responsible for those tasks, but that’s not always true.
In fact, delegating parts of your work can increase your productivity because you don’t need to worry about that part of your business anymore. You’ll have more time to concentrate on what matters most or on taking care of yourself, so you can continue doing well in your job.
7. Take regular breaks
There’s a lot of evidence to support taking regular breaks while working. When you take a break, your brain refreshes and gets to thinking in new ways. The benefit is clear: A meta-analysis of 60 studies showed that short, mid-workday breaks increased creativity by 20%.
Taking more frequent breaks also makes you more productive — you get more done in less time overall. So, instead of jumping from one task to another (or trying to do them simultaneously), set aside time for regularly scheduled breaks throughout your day — and see if it doesn’t improve your productivity as well as your mood.
Breaks are more important than you think, particularly when working long hours. Not only do they give your brain a chance to rest and process everything it has taken in over a given period of time.
But they can also help you come up with better solutions to problems. Breaks can come in many forms — in fact, even getting up from your desk and walking around for five minutes can be incredibly refreshing.
A marathon is a race, and no one is at their best running 26 miles without taking regular breaks. Pacing is just as important in your day-to-day life as it is in any sport. Put away your to-do list when you get home from work and don’t look at it again until morning.
If you have a lot of work to do, set an alarm for two hours later, so you can get up and walk around for a bit, or even just give yourself five minutes to think about something else. In order to be at your best — and remain that way throughout your day — you need to take regular breaks; otherwise, you risk burnout.
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