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Life is hectic; whether rushing to get the kids to school or yourself to work, you can fall behind fast and play catch up the rest of the day. The day can feel like a total loss before it even begins.

It’s hard to keep your precious minutes from being robbed.

We all face similar challenges with work and life demands and relationships to nurture. And it’s easy for any of the three to intrude on our schedule, especially since they’re so important.

One of the Biggest Time Robbers

Failing to organize and manage our time is a massive time thief. Life happens, but even so, we must structure our day. 

How often have you started the morning with a prioritized list of things to do, but by the end of the day, only one or two items have been crossed off because of the unexpected?

You get everyone up, get dressed, and make breakfast. Afterward, you go to load the dirty dishes in the dishwasher but realize it hasn’t been emptied or you’ve run out of dishwasher soap, so you put it on the list and keep plugging away—no big deal. While getting a glass of water before opening your laptop to start your project, you notice the kids have left their dirty clothes all over the floor; you spend twenty minutes sorting clothes and starting laundry. As you wander from room to room, you see a light bulb that needs to be changed or something to be put away.

By the end of the day, you’ve changed a lightbulb, put a few things away, taken unexpected calls, and replied to emails, but the dishes are still dirty, and you never got around to your project, your top priority for the day. 

Whatever your circumstances might be, sticking to a schedule isn’t easy. 

It’s time to take charge of your time and manage your schedule to increase your effectiveness and improve how you feel at the end of the day.

It’s important to be aware of how you feel throughout the day and at the end of the day because if you feel overwhelmed and stressed, your productivity will suffer, not only that, you just won’t feel happy about your life. 

Organizing our time realistically (not cramming too much into the day) helps boost feelings of productivity and reduces burnout and stress.  

Time Management Strategies

Successful leaders and entrepreneurs see time management strategies as tools, and they use them. Is their execution always perfect? No, but at least they have a plan.

They start with the end in mind and work backward, setting goals accordingly. Once they’ve set goals, they schedule tasks in their calendar and do everything within their power to stick to their plan, ruthlessly saying no to anything that doesn’t move them forward, if at all possible.  

They notice how much time it takes to complete specific tasks so they can organize their time more efficiently in the future. 

Time is a kind of currency that we spend to make dreams come true. Sometimes, we can delegate tasks to free up time. 

Other Major Time Wasters

Email can be a huge waste of time if checked every ten or fifteen minutes throughout the day. Turn off notifications, and check email only two or three times during the day if you’re industry allows it.

Social media, mindless surfing, and games are time wasters, too. Do those things after you’ve met your priorities unless social media and researching stuff is essential to your job. Otherwise, leave those things for the evening. 

Commit

Time robbers will always be with us, but that doesn’t matter because we’re in charge of our time. 

Organizing our time and using it wisely is our responsibility. 

Time = life.

Commit to using your time wisely and effectively to get the most from your daily activities and have enough time to spend with your family, friends, and things that matter so you can have the time and energy to unlock your best life.  

The post Time = Life: Taking Charge Of Your Time appeared first on Lifestyle.

Social Media/Emails/Texts

There isn’t anything inherently “bad” about social media, email, and texts/messages. But do they serve you, or do you serve them? Are they helpful, or are they a distraction?

You know how it goes; you can be in the middle of something important when your phone interrupts you, leading to checking a message, then hopping over to Instagram or Facebook, then visiting a couple of websites, etc. Before you know it, you’ve lost forty-five minutes, and for what?

And here’s the thing, it’s not just how much time the interruption steals from you; it’s also about how time you lose afterward, too. According to a University of California Irvine study, it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to the task!

So taking thirty seconds to check a FB post steals about twenty-five minutes of your life!

Think about that statistic for a second. If it’s accurate, each time you get interrupted, it takes over twenty minutes to refocus; how much time are you losing every day to multiple interruptions? It could be hours.

Life is too precious to be interrupted by the constant dings, chirps, and rings of our smart devices. Minutes add up.

Life doesn’t stop for rings, chirps, tweets, and dings. And neither should we.

Take Your Life Back: One tactic that works well for many people who’ve gotten serious about guarding their time and life is to set a time each day for checking their email and social media, etc. They don’t allow themselves to be interrupted randomly throughout the day. They turn off notifications and mute their phone.

Over-Planning & Preparing

It’s one thing to plan your day, but it’s another thing to procrastinate by over-planning and over-preparing.

We can be busy planning, or we can get busy living. Sure, planning and preparing are essential to living and creating our dream life. But over-planning and preparing are forms of procrastination, perfectionism, or unclear thinking.

Take Your Life Back: Find some kind of a planner or scheduler that you can live with.

A great one is the Panda Planner.

Then on Saturday or Sunday, take an hour (yes, an hour, not two or three) to plan the upcoming week. Schedule important activities and appointments. Make time for what matters most to you.

Will your plan be perfect? No. Will life go exactly as planned? Again, no. But you’ll have a plan that keeps you focused on what matters most to you, and you’ll be living your life instead of planning to live your life.

Multitasking

Multitasking wastes time and results in average outcomes at best. Dividing your energy and attention among several tasks is inefficient. Some researchers say that it decreases productivity by as much as 40%.

Multitasking is a thief that steals productivity and life.

Take Your Life Back: This is an easy one to deal with because all you have to do focus on one thing at a time until you’re done. Life will be less stressful, too.

Catching the News

Do we really need news 24/7? Just because something is being reported doesn’t make it news.

Take Your Life Back: Set a time to scan headlines. If you want to take back massive amounts of your time, energy, and life, turn off or block the “news.” Sports, politics, entertainment, and local news will still be there when you choose to check them out on YOUR schedule.

Chores and Errands 

Everyone has chores and errands. It’s not that we do them; it’s when. If possible, save time by doing errands when traffic is light or when fewer people are out.

Do chores during off time, too, not during work hours or when you’ve scheduled something important to you.

Take Your Life Back: Do your errands when there’s less traffic and when the stores won’t be crowded. Regarding chores, look at your week and schedule a block of time on a day or two for cleaning and decluttering.

Time = life. Every person on the planet gets 86,2400 seconds of time each day. That’s 1,440 minutes or 24 hours. When it’s gone, it’s gone.

Protect yourself against time thieves that have been stealing precious hours of life from you every day.

Live YOUR life!

Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash

The post 5 Time-Thieves That Are Stealing Your Productivity And Life appeared first on Lifestyle.