Are You A Time User Or A Time Waster?

If you are like me, you’ve often wished there were 48 hours in a day instead of just 24. There never seems to be enough time to get everything done that you want. Since we just have about 16 hours a day not counting sleep time, it’s important how we use the time we have.

On the average, people waste about 2 hours a day. This is mainly from poor planning. If a person is unorganized, they waste time trying to find things, they miss appointments, they only do one thing at a time when they could be doing two.

Good time management is a major building block to success. Oftentimes, it’s not how much time we spend working but how efficiently we do the work. The key to successful time management is careful planning and setting priorities.

Plan your day, your week, and your month in advance. Know when things need to be done. A great way to “buy time” is to multi-task. Do more than one thing at a time. There are many things that do not require concentrated mental effort. These are more easily combined.

“Failing to plan is planning to fail,”

- unknown

Even though I am a big pro football fan, I can’t justify sitting down and spending three hours watching a game. I have to be doing other things while I do it. Thank goodness for instant replay! I’ve found this is a good time to spend icing injuries or some other busy work. I can also record the games and watch them while exercising. I exercise about 30 minutes a day so during the football season I can watch a game during the week without wasting any time doing it.

When you run errands try to do as many as you can on one trip. If you are self-employed, you can combine personal errands that are on the way to a business errand and have the mileage written off as a business expense.

I’ve been fortunate to have been able to work at home for the past ten years. It’s been great because I hate to waste time commuting. If you must commute, you can use the time to listen to audio self-improvement tapes, audio books or anything educational.

If you are a regular exerciser and belong to a gym, think about working out at home. If you lack the space and money for exercise equipment, try traditional body weight exercises. A little research on the Internet can show you websites devoted to this subject. Even though I lifted weights for 20 years, I’ve converted to body weight exercises. I’ve found they feel better and get the same if not better results. Of course, if you go to the gym to socialize or network, that’s okay. You’re doing more than one thing at a time. You can go walking with your wife. That way you’re getting exercise and husband / wife interaction at the same time.

Setting priorities enables you to get the most important things done. Keep you eye on the big picture. Don’t let low priority things bump off the higher priority tasks from your schedule. If you’ve only got so much time, it’s imperative you spend your time doing the things that bring you the most benefit.

“Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.”

– Goethe

Time is so precious. If you want to be successful in life you need to be spending more time being productive and doing things that are moving you forward. Spending hours a day watching TV, playing computer games, or surfing the Internet is not productive time usage. We all need downtime but you need to determine how much is really necessary. If you use your productive time efficiently then you will have more time to relax and do the fun things.

Are You Giving Yourself A Hard Time?

Are you constantly criticizing yourself for every little time you do wrong, for example saying things to ourselves like….“I should have said this”… “Look I can’t even do this simple thing”… “Everyone thinks I’m stupid” etc, etc.

I put my hand up too, I know I’m guilty of this as well as everyone, I often say things like “I wonder will anybody read this article” or “maybe they will think it stinks” blah, blah, blah.

But when you think of it if you had a best friend and you talked to them like this how long would they stay with you?.. Or would they even want to be around you? But we do this everyday and, when you really think about you’ll never be able to escape from "you" no matter how far you run, so today give yourself a break!!

We often go through our day to day life being constantly stressed out and on edge but when you think about it how much stress is actually coming from the outside and how much are you actually making yourself through negative thinking and letting your imagination run away with you?? So, today treat yourself and give yourself a pep talk

Try out this exercise on yourself when you have some quiet time to yourself. Put your left hand on your heart chakra (this point is in the middle of your chest) and slowly focus on your breathing as you do this, imagine your breath coming in through your hand and into your chest and with every inhalation feel a wave of relaxation entering with it.

And as you breathe out feel the stress going out of your body back out through your hand. When you find yourself starting to relax, start to say some positive affirmations to yourself out loud. Congratulate yourself for all that you’ve done that day and anything positive else you’d like to say.

If you find it a bit awkward to think of things to say to yourself …. mentally step back and think of you as a small child or a friend you really like and imagine what nice things they’d like to hear you say to them and then say these to yourself.

You’ll definitely start to feel a lot better about yourself and probably in the future you’ll catch yourself before you call yourself something nasty or start to pick on yourself!!