There are thousands of blogs, training courses and books out there on managing your time better. But you have to ask yourself, why is that?
I believe that everyone is looking for the magic bullet: some mythical way to conjure up another hour in the day, or revolutionary way to manage your time better. But the truth is that there is no magic bullet, and we will always have the same number of hours in the day.
The secret (if you can call it that) is how you use your time. We will give you occasional tips on the blog to help you, but honestly – you know what to do already.
One of the biggest hitters, is to plan your diary accurately. It doesn’t matter what shape your diary is – pocket diary, online, on your phone or good old fashioned Filofax. There are arguments for and against each of them – the only tip I would add is make sure you have a back up plan if you lose it!
Getting back to planning your diary… we all have 168 hours per week. If we assume we need 8 hours per day for sleep, 2 hours per day for meals, 1 hour per day for travel, for example; that leaves 91 hours per week, or more precisely 13 hours per day.
Don’t get too excited yet – 13 hours sounds like a lot but it isn’t! Put in your known activities: for example Monday morning team meeting, pick up children from school 3pm on Tuesday – everything you already know you need to do. Also book in time for completing tasks, and actions you have committed to in meetings.
The space you have left in the diary is the hours you have left in the day/week to play with – so you know straight away if you are trying to overcommit yourself. And learning to say no is the real secret to good time management!