Time management is an awareness of how you're spending your time, and once you're aware of that you can take steps to improve it. Years ago, I had a little chime that would go off every 15 minutes. If I happened to be wordsmithing an email and heard two dings, I was reminded that I was spending too much time on that task.
Another way to frame this is putting an economic value on your time. Let’s say you want to make $200,000 a year and you’re working 200 of those 365 days. When you break it down further you should be making $100 an hour. So, if you ever find yourself doing anything that is worth less than $100 an hour, stop doing it. Just stop. Find a more efficient way to do it or outsource it.
A third tactic is to let your subconscious mind do the heavy lifting. I always plan the seven most important things to do the next day the night before. Why? Your subconscious mind is a wonderful supercomputer that will process the best way to get things done in the background. When you get up the next morning, you’ll feel motivated and know exactly what you’re going to do first and how you will approach that (and all the other) tasks that were planned for that day.
Time management is also affected by your workspace and your productivity. I recently invested in a Varidesk, which changes your sitting desk into a standing desk by raising your monitors and your keyboard. This is just one way to change your work environment. Regardless of what you choose to change, there is more than one way to optimize your phone calls, correspondence, note-taking, archiving, etc.
Lastly, keep yourself accountable. How many phone calls did you make during the day? How many proposals did you send out? How many emails did you write? How many deals did you do? If you’re unhappy with your output, the important thing is that at least you made yourself aware of the problem. With that in mind, there’s no reason you shouldn’t endeavor to be more organized and more accountable when it comes to how you spend your time. You can’t manage what you don’t measure. So, start by measuring everything you possibly can and keep your eye on those various metrics with a constant focus on how you might improve them.
