“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst”

William Penn

How many times have you heard someone say, or maybe you have  “I need more hours in a day”; how many times have you realized is getting close to the end of your work day and you have not done everything you needed to do for the day?  Well if that is your case you are not alone. The truth is that most people fail to manage their time and find there are unable to achieve what they have set up to do in the first place. Here are some steps that can help you manage your time better and do more:

Know your limits. The first step in time management is to know your limits, know how much you can produce and what you are capable of achieving, if you are trying to do too much you will probably end up doing less than what you can do, you will be stress out and you will feel overwhelm.

Game plan. Have a goal on what you want to achieve, you can do this daily or even weekly, plan on what you want to achieve for that day or that week, if you show up to the office or to you workplace and you don’t have a solid plan on what you want to do, more likely, you will end up being unproductive and unable to do what you need to do.

Categorize your priorities. Now that you know what you want to achieve or what you need to do, create four buckets, in the first bucket place all tasks that are important and urgent, these will be tasks that your boss or your clients expect you to do by certain deadline, the second bucket will be tasks that are important but have low urgency due to extended deadline or other circumstances, the third bucket are tasks with low importance but high urgency, these could be projects you are working on your own, and the final bucket are tasks that are low in importance and low in urgency.

Assign specific time to your buckets. Now that you have those four buckets, assign them specific times to work on. For example, you might want to work on your first bucket from 8 am till 11 am, then on your second bucket from 11:30 to 1:30, etc.

Leave free time. As you assign specific times to your buckets make sure you leave 20% of your time unscheduled, use that time to cover last minute tasks, emails, text messages, urgent conference calls, etc. this way you can manage last minute eventualities without sacrificing your schedule, if you end up not needing the full 20% use the time it to get ahead on the first or second bucket.

Take breaks. Is important to take frequent breaks, make sure that you not working for too long on one task. Avoiding fatigue or getting bored with a single task is important in order to keep working effectively, also you can choose to work on bucket one from 8:00 to 10:00, bucket two from 10:30 to 11:30 and then return to a task from bucket one from 11:30 to 12:30.

Don’t multitask. Sometimes it feels like a file download is taking forever, why not check your emails while is doing that? Or look for that folder your boss wanted? While multitasking might seem like a good way to do more with less in reality you will end up doing less or doing it less well. While our brains can handle more than one task at a time, it can only focus on one important task at a time.

Try these steps and measure your goals, you will notice the difference and you will realized that you don’t need more than 24 hours in a day.

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