How to Get More Out of Your Time

Do you find yourself always rushing to get everything done? Never have enough time? Life is short and the list of things to do is long but if you organize your time intelligently you may be surprised at how much you can do and still have free time left over. Here are some strategies for good time management.

Create monthly and weekly schedules.

Having a semi organized schedule will prevent you from having to constantly wonder... what to do next. Schedules also make you feel more in control: if you have a lot of things you want to get done on a particular day, a schedule can help to break things down into bite sized chunks so that you can get straight to business instead of wasting time worrying how on earth you will get everything done.

Most sources recommend you have both a monthly and a weekly schedule roughly planned out. Having a monthly schedule with all important events marked down is good because it lets you plan for things way in advance- you may not want to volunteer for a major red cross event on a week that's already over packed. Weekly schedules let you smooth out all the nitty gritty details.

Carry things to do during wait periods.

Humans spend an inordinate amount of their lives waiting. The traffic jam to work, the weekend train ride, unforeseen delays and unbearably long store lines all eat away at time that could be spent doing something else. You can gain some of this time by carrying around a magazine or project or small book or two to read during waits. When I started doing this last year, I found that it saved me a lot more time than I expected!

Do important and time consuming tasks first.

If you have a list of household or work chores to get done, it's best to immediately begin with the hardest and longest tasks. That way you don't have to spend time dreading them while working on the easier or more enjoyable things and inevitably taking your time so that you don't have to do the one thing that you are truly dreading... It happens to the best of us.

Get up at a somewhat early time on weekends.