Ever find yourself cramming for that final assignment or simply out of time to get anything done? Being a college graduate and still under the life of deadlines today, I find myself constantly searching for time.
With the fast paced lifestyle of today’s constantly changing society that includes cutting-edge technology and applications, finding a healthy balance with time is crucial to living a stress-free lifestyle.
Whether you want to plan out a weekend, a day at work, or a personal schedule, managing your time can be a beneficial support system that may let you discover more time in your typical day.
Growing up, I was that one student who was always turning in late assignments and staying up late to complete a report or term paper. Juggling so many tasks as a student and having a job, it became difficult at times to discern whether I should focus more on school or work.
Evolving from a procrastinator to a task-oriented specialist didn’t arrive overnight. It took years of self-discipline and commitment to grow into how I handle things to this day. Below are some tips I have that may help you in finding a healthy balance between work and life.
Priorities
Which leads to my first tip for you all; organize and rank your priorities based on importance. Prioritizing your most essential tasks allows you to narrow your focus, avoiding being distracted by other tasks that may not be as important.
Once you prioritize what you want to accomplish first, the next step will be to create blocks of time in throughout a given day, dedicating them to specific tasks. From a simple to-do list to billing out all your tasks in a calendar app on your mobile device or tablet, you are creating something to be held accountable to.
Utilizing your time effectively will be key to your amount of productivity. By creating incentives such as television, a nice meal, or a dip in the pool can help to modify an individual’s behavior to ensure compliance with time-sensitive deadlines.
I realize having deadlines brings about urgency, but it is up to an individual on how they want to tackle a task, big or small. Some choose to knock out a task little by little over a course of time as others may choose to leave it all for the last minute.
I’ve always strived to stay ahead no matter how many deadlines I had at a single point in time. Working for a newspaper in college, I had to divvy time between my fraternal duties, schoolwork, and story deadlines.
Breathe A Little
Taking mini breaks and giving yourself a little bit of downtime help to offset a potentially oversized workload. I tend to spread out tasks and outline it, breaking it down into small sections. As an example, an individual may find it easier to write an outline for a 2,500-word term paper and do each part by section versus trying to write it all in one shot.
It seemed like a tall order at the time, but I look at it as a stepping stone to how I carry on working today. Having organization and structure has allowed me to accomplish everything in what feels to be a short day.
Carrying a schedule and keeping a journal with your thoughts, activities, and conversations that occur over a week can help you as well. It will help in helping you assess how much time is actually spent producing results and how much time is wasted being unproductive.
Start It Off Right
The biggest tip I have is to take the first 30 minutes of your day to plan out everything. With so many distractions around, blocking out social media and placing a “Do Not Disturb” sign may do you justice as well. Logging out your email while you focus on a task eliminates distractions, even if it is only for a 15 to 30 minute time frame.
Making it known that you want to be productive and left alone can possibly lead to more quality time to get things done. Don’t think that there isn’t enough time a day because 24 hours is plenty of time if you utilize every minute and hour effectively. Some readers may not agree as using technology bounds you by clock time, not real-time in which we live in.
Time will not feel like it drags if you have incentives for everything. When you’re having fun, time flies because you are not susceptible to any kind of deadline. Some of you may find these tips effective for you as others may not, but finding a balance between work and life is helpful to your own well-being.
Harmony
Harmony is hardly seen in this day and age as we live in a fast-paced society that is always up and moving to the next task, even as we speak. Mastering your own time is important in not only feeling the sense of accomplishment, but also the peace of mind that you used your time wisely and can now sit back to relish in your effectiveness.
Time management is truly an effective tool when you stick to the schedule because although things are subject to change, a schedule outlines your tasks. It is almost like giving yourself a daily homework assignment, but there is no penalty for it since it contributes to improving how effective you are with time in a day.
In short, use your time for things that worth it. We are all equal when it comes to time. If you value your time, rest assured your peers will see it and react to it, whether it is effective or not. Always remember to sleep and if you’re procrastinating, put a stop to it and start treating your tasks more seriously.
If you manage to keep a record of everything you cover for a year and take a look back it, you can fine tune what may have went wrong to better prepare yourself for future tasks. Narrowing your focus and cutting out all of the distractions may yield the results you’ve been searching for in the battle of time and productivity.