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Take Charge of Your Time, Part 2
By Flora Morris Brown, Ph.D. | February 10, 2008
To enjoy your life you will have to take charge of your time. In Part 1 you can find the first three ways to do this. Here are the remaining ways to take charge of your time.
4. Make a to-do list each night for the next day.
Priortize it. Do the essentials first. Carry the leftovers from one day to the next. If something on that list remains undone for a full week, you either don’t want to do and should drop it, or reevaluate its priority. Maybe it should be a goal for next month or next year.
When I went back to school to work on my Ph.D., I had a five year old and a two year old. I had to plan very carefully to balance my home and academic life. Meeting those academic deadlines was critical, but so was picking up my munchkins from preschool, going to violin lessons, feeding my household and many other things.
To reach your goals you will have to decide what’s important to you and give up the things that aren’t. While I was in school I gave up the notion of a spotless house, going to movies and wearing designer clothes, especially after we decided to have our third child during my second year of doctoral studies.
5. Don’t let your life be interrupted or guided by someone else’s priorities or emergencies.
- Stop rescuing folks who manage to get themselves into the same fix on a regular basis: running out of gas, running out of money before payday, etc. These people drain not only your time, but also your energy and brainpower.
- By the way, you aren’t still answering those telemarketing calls, are you? You do have Caller ID on your phone, right?
- Turn off your cell phone when you’re engaged in an important activity. You do have voice mail, right?
- Don’t return calls to folks you don’t want to talk to. It doesn’t make you a bad person, just a smart, purpose-driven person.
6. Plan ahead.
You know your car requires gas, for example, and that you won’t have time to get it on the way to an appointment. Fill up the day before.
Being happy and successful is not a matter of luck. It’s a matter of doing what is most important to you minute by minute, day by day.
If you don’t manage your time, other people will. Guess whose priorities they will put in place?
Topics: Life choices, managing your time | No Comments »