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Category: Articles » Self Improvement » Time Management » Article » Article Code

Top Five Time Management Mistakes

Zaxx.org.uk is committed to providing you with the best self improvement tips and advice that is available. Time management is key to better quality productivity for everyone. Brian Tracy and Steven Covey are leaders in this field. Many people, assume that to get more done, to get better volume or quality output, we have to work a lot more. This could hardly be further from the truth. Time management is not, to use the cliché, necessarily working "harder", but rather, "smarter". Therefore to significantly accomplish more, we may not need to increase our efforts by very much at ... read more

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Many people, assume that to get more done, to get better volume or quality output, we have to work a lot more. This could hardly be further from the truth. Time management is not, to use the cliché, necessarily working "harder", but rather, "smarter".

Therefore to significantly accomplish more, we may not need to increase our efforts by very much at all. As an example, in a horse race, the first horse may earn a £50,000 purse and the second horse may earn a £25,000 purse. The first horse gets twice as much as the second horse, but not because it ran twice as far or fast. At the end of the race (the measurement stage) it is often only marginally ahead of the competition. To win at anything, we do not need to be fantastically in advance, simply 1% better than our competitors, colleagues or other method of measured expectation would do.

We are all productive in our days – our "dance card" is full (thanks to Brian Tracy for that one). It would be hard to survive the demands of this world if we were not. Time cannot be saved by doing things improperly or hastily. Time cannot be saved, just re-allocated for more beneficial use. Becoming more efficient is the goal, but the real challenge is how much more productive can we really become?

Time management often has to do with more of what we are not doing rather than what we are doing. Sometimes our mistakes and omissions will keep us from running at a full pace.
 
There are five major "Time Management Mistakes" everyone needs to avoid to help us to increase our daily successes, efficiency and satisfaction, both on and off the job, in less time (or the same) but with less stress.

1.	Start your day without a plan. Each day will then begin by responding to the loudest or repetitious voice and you will spend your time in a defensive slog, responding to every other person's results of lack of planning and immediate urgent event demands. The tail will wag the dog. If there is a vacuum in your time management, someone will fill that void. Not that they are bad people, but they will take all of your time to run their affairs for them if you let them. Working extremely hard you may not have done enough of right things by the end of the day. How many times have you thought to yourself, "I have been busy but got nothing to show for it." Time Management is not doing the wrong things quicker. That is like trying to build a house from the roof down. Time Management is doing the right things in the right order.

2.	Get out of balance in your life. Our lives are generally made up of seven main areas: Health, Family, Financial, Intellectual, Social, Professional, and Spiritual. We will not usually spend time every day in each or even the same amount of time in each area. For most people, if we spend a suitable amount of quality time in each area, our lives will be in equilibrium. When we neglect so much as one area, never mind two or three, we start getting into the "overwhelm" stage and flip into a spiral of frenzied activity to try and justify our actions and compensate for our indolence. Eventually we end up sabotaging our success. If we fail to take enough time for health, our family life and social life are hurt. If the financial area is out of balance, we will not be able to focus adequately on our professional goals, family or own spiritual needs.

3.	Have an untidy desk. Numerous studies over the years have shown that the person who works with a messy desk spends, on average, one and a half hours per day looking for things or being distracted by things. That's a working day per week. And, it's not a solid block of an hour and a half, but a minute here and a minute there, and like a leaky tap, drip, drip, drip, it doesn't seem like a major loss, but at the end the day, we're dumping gallons of water down the drain.. If you have ever visited the office of a top manager, a director, CEO or chairman, they will usually work with a clean desk environment. You could think that this practice is due to that person's access to other staff members. While there may be some truth in that, in most cases, you will find a time in that persons past where they learnt that successful people were constantly working with a clean desk. This may well have been (as is often declared) the catalyst that gave them the focus they needed to become promoted to where they are today.

4.	Stay up late. Nearly three-quarters of us complain on a regular basis we do not get enough sleep, or do not sleep too well. We struggle through our days feeling tired. Often it is not the quantity of sleep (although some do fail in this area), but the quality of sleep. Their days are filled with so much stress; they are out of control, working harder and when they get home, cannot unwind due to their home problems and pressures that it's difficult to get a full night's sleep. If you will plan your day, then work your plan, you will get more done, feel a higher sense of accomplishment, and experience less stress and enjoy a more restful night's sleep.

5.	Don't break for lunch. Many people do not take a lunch break, often working through it in the hope that they will have more time to produce results. Formal studies have shown in most cases it works in just the opposite way. From doing what we do for several hours, we start to dull our senses and skills. We make snap decisions, and sometimes our tone is short or sharp. Anyone can work through lunch and be productive, but that is not the issue. The issue is the quality of your productivity if you do take a break, get some fresh air, or even just relax and read a book or article. A lunch break, even a short twenty minute break, gives you a chance to get your batteries all charged up again to more effectively handle the challenges for the rest of the day. We are less likely to procrastinate on those apparently difficult tasks that, in the long run, will always make a positive difference in our personal productivity.

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