My business experience has taught me one true thing: that maximizing your productivity, happiness, peace, or impact is best achieved when you have a clear understanding of the 12 Rules of Time.
1. Have goals
Being more efficient with your time is irrelevant if you don't know how you want to spend it. When managing time, a compass is more important than a clock. Knowing where you want to go and spending your time on the things that will get you there.
Many people spend energy trying to be more efficient without first doing what's important: setting goals. It's like being lost on your way to a new city. Going faster won't help if you're going in the wrong direction. Figure out which direction to go and go in that direction.
Once prepared, your list of goals will reveal what is important to you.
2. Analyze how you spend your time
It's always good to know how you're spending your time right now. You can monitor this by setting a timer that starts every 15 minutes; whenever it sounds, write down exactly what you are doing. Alternatively, break your day into 15-minute blocks and record each activity you do.
Once you have your time records, examine them. How do they compare to your goals? Are you spending time where your priorities are?
3. Keep a to-do list
It sounds too simple, but in fact it is the basis of all time management systems. Your to-do list can be electronic, on fancy paper, bound in a notebook, or loose leaf. The key is to have everything you want to achieve on one list. My to-do list might contain a one-line item, such as "write the annual report," which refers me to a much larger file or even an array of files on that item.
4. Prioritize your list
Once you have a list, determine which items are important. Mark them with a highlighter, red pen, or any other way that makes them stand out.
Sometimes I feel like my to-do list is too big. Every item on the list screams “pay attention to me!” even though most of them were not highlighted as important. In these cases, I take a blank sheet of paper and cover my to-do list and write down only the three or four most important items. You need to focus on them.
5. Control procrastination
I use a number of tricks to break any lingering procrastination tendencies. For example, I like to have a hard copy of my digital to-do list. I reprint it every few days as new items come in and fall completed. It's at these times that I look for items that I've marked as high priority but that aren't getting done right now.
People often say that I have a lot of self-control. But in reality, it's largely environmental control. I check my environment to eliminate things that I might use to procrastinate. Remove games from your computer, for example, sell the TV and get rid of busy tasks that you use to avoid important tasks.
I have developed one effective habit that has helped me overcome procrastination: “Do the worst thing first. At the beginning of each day, I do the one task that causes me the most stress and that I haven't had time to do. Sometimes I only give it a quarter of an hour
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