Organize IT

View original image

Over the last two weeks I’ve been looking at time management. Firstly, I looked at the misconception that there is never enough time in the day. I found that the more time we have the more likely we are to waste it anyway. As one comment said, even if we had 48 hours in the day we’d still want more. With this in mind I started looking at what it takes to use your time better by looking at the two building blocks of good time management; being effective and efficient. To conclude I want to take a look at how I personally manage my time using those two principles, so that you have a better idea of what is involved. Excuse all the links in this post but to avoid repeating stuff I think it’s better if I point you to other posts dedicated to the various topics rather than rehashing it here. I hope it proves useful for you.

View original image

Good time management involves being both effective and efficient. You have to be able to pick out the right tasks and then do them in the most economical way. In the first part of this series I looked at effectiveness. As I discussed then, that is certainly the most important stage. However it also needs to be tied with efficient work practices to really save you time. It’s no good deciding you’re going to write that life changing book you’ve always wanted to do if you are going to procrastinate all the time. Likewise, focusing on preparations for a big work conference is all well and good but if you’re not breaking the workload down into manageable chunks you’re going to be wasting time.

Below are the most popular posts from September. As usual, if you missed any of these posts please check them out, and leave a comment. There was quite a broad range of topics covered this month, ranging from life advice for students to covering the first steps of an healthy lifestyle. Do you like the variety or would you prefer more focus on particular subjects? Let me know your thoughts!

• Introducing My New And Improved Weekly Planner!
• How To Deal With The Obstacles In Your Life: Part 1
• How To Deal With The Obstacles In Your Life: Part 2
• Self-Help Myths: There Is Never Enough Time In The Day
• Productivity Tip #08: Streamline Your Productivity System
• Productivity Tip #09: The Hard Landscape
• The 5 Simplest Healthy Habits You Will Ever Learn
• 4 Tips For Students That Will Set You Up For Life

View original image

When it comes to good time management you need to learn to be two things – effective and efficient. In basic terms that means you have to be able to pick out the right tasks and then do them in the most economical way. In this two part series I want to look at both approaches and discuss my own experiences of how I achieve them. Firstly I will look at how to be effective. It’s important to understand how significant this stage is. It’s pointless working on something efficiently if you don’t need to do it in the first place.

“I never have enough time!” I bet you’ve heard people say that often. It’s quite likely that if you are reading this blog you will also have said it plenty of times too, and you want to do something about it. When I was in my getting (any) thing done stage several years ago I often felt the same way. Then I spent several months out of work and I suddenly had so much time I didn’t know what to do with it. This made me rethink my views on those precious hours constantly ticking away…