Many people believe that life is not fair to them as they are not able to achieve the thing their peers manage to do in a given time frame. But they forget the fact that time is equal for everyone. In fact, the is the most valuable currency if spend properly can create situations that will always work in your favour.
In this post, we talk about few areas in where you can apply some time management skills to make some time for that extra thing that will take you far in life.
1. Uninstall time-consuming apps from your Smartphone.
Photo Source
It surprises me so much when a person says he does not get time to do a certain thing say, going to the gym or finishing the school/college assignment yet they are glued to their smartphones all the time.
You may have not noticed yet, but smartphones are the biggest productivity killers. Be it your love for taking selfies or checking out the latest Social media channel.
So, find the apps you are spending most of your time with and ask yourself if you can live without those apps, if the answer is yes, then go ahead and remove it.
Try to bring the Screen On time to less than 1 hour, if you check your phone for 5 minutes every time, it will still be 20 times a day, which is quite enough for a normal usage.
It was Facebook, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp for me. These three apps are taking most of my smartphone time so I removed them from my phone and the results I got are quite satisfying for me.
2. Multi-tasking is a myth.
Photo Source
Multitasking is a word that has been exploited a lot in last few years, the sole USP of smartphones is to give you the ability to multi-task. But it’s not the right way to do something efficiently. Sure, you can manage to do two tasks at a time but the quality of the work will suffer.
So, the goal should be to give your complete focus to just one thing at a time and do it the best way. Move to the other when one is done.
You can still do a bit of multi-tasking by combining a couple of things that does not divert your attention. For example, you can listen to informative podcasts while cooking or driving. You can clean your house or do other chores while listening to the music.
Just combine two different things and make the most of your time, you get the idea, don’t you?
3. Prioritize your work before starting it.
Photo Source
Not every task on your to-do list requires equal amount of time and energy, btw, You should make a list of things-to-do if you don’t already, use Any.do or Google Keep or any other app in your smartphone.
So, the goal should be to tackle to most difficult tasks at the start of the day, as your you plenty of time and energy for it. Move to the 2nd difficult only after you are done with first, then move to third and so on.
4. Apply the 5-minute rule.
Photo Credit
Take a good look around yourself, you will find things you are delaying that would literally take 5 minutes to finish but you are still not doing it, why, because, you are not getting started.
We have so many things pending because we are scared to start, we do not want to invest ourselves into something. So we avoid it, as much as we can. With 5 minutes rule, all you have to do is, promise yourself that you will do it for just 5 minutes, even if takes you to understand the concept of a task, you only devote 5 minutes to any task.
Because setting started is the toughest part, do it for 5 minutes and then come back to it again for, maybe, 10 minutes this time, who knows you stick to it for longer time or maybe even finish the task. The 5-minute rule helps complete so many starts as it helps you get started.
5. Automate or Process tasks in Batches
Photo Source
Tools are made for making human lives easy, there re some tasks that can be automated and countless man hours can be saved for some more productive work.
Backing up photos to Google Photos so that it is available on all the platforms and you do not have to spend time transferring photos is also a type of automation, Taking a picture of a long sheet of paper and extract the text using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) apps is also automation, as it saves a lot of time. Save repetitive email responses as drafts so that you can send them quickly with minor edits to make it relevant.
Find the things that can be done in together, you will end up doing a lot of things as you will already be in a working mode, so find similar things and execute them at once.
For example, if you have to pick something up from a particular place tomorrow and you are visiting it today, why not pick it up today, finish up all the tasks that require to be at a particular place. Google Keep has location alarm, which is helpful for setting alarms for picking up something from a particular location whenever you are near that location.
6. Utilize the available resources.
Photo Source
It means whatever tool you have, make them most of it, for example, your smartphone. You can use it for more than just a communication device, Take a picture of a long document and extract text (as what we mentioned in the section above). You can use Dropbox to save all your important files so that they are available everywhere.
Save long articles for reading later so that you can continue doing what you are doing and not spend an hour an a random but important article. Use Pocket, Readability or simple bookmark them (Google Chrome browser will sync everything across all the devices)
We can go on and on and on with these timesaving tips, but the fact remains the same, they are nothing useful if you do not apply them in real life. So, just start applying, do not procrastinate.
Leave a Reply