Time Management – The Time In Motion Study

Balance. Stress Control. The subject of recent blogs. Why? Because so many people continue to ask about those two vital aspects of a happy, fulfilled life.

Let’s look a bit further into the subject of time management as an important part of both balance and stress control.

As difficult as it is to do, I am going to recommend that you do your own time in motion study. Keep track (don’t go nuts with this), but keep track of what you do for a few days—a week or two would be better so that you can truly pick up patterns. Time management experts say to track what you do every 15 minutes. Well, that may be a bit overkill—even though I am sure it’s a good idea. (I have actually gone through time management training with an expert—and that is exactly what we did).

Once you have done this study for a while—look for things that get in the way of you completing tasks, or focusing on something or someone, or wearing yourself to a frazzle. What are your interruptions? What are your time wasters?

Then, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Could I refine some tasks through better organization so that I save time when I do ________(whatever)?
2. Are there things that are interruptions that keep pulling me away from a priority project? Could I combine certain things and do more in less time rather than doing something—getting pulled away—then going back to the project over and over?

You are better off to focus on something and keep working on it until you get it done, rather than going away from it and getting unfocused. However, determine your top priority task and focus on that. Then, even if you do get interrupted, go back to that task. If you get interrupted again, so be it. Go back to your number one task. Keep doing that until you get it done. Then go to priority number two. And so on.

1. Time wasters? Identify these and ask yourself a tough question. Do I really need to do that? Do I want to do that more than the things I have placed on my priority list? Or could I either get rid of those time wasters or reorganize then so that they don’t become destructive to me?
2. Figure out how much time you need for certain tasks or projects and pre-block time for those things. When you pre-block time for something that is vital to you, focus on that.

I will continue this study of time management as a part of stress control in upcoming blogs.

For now, follow the above written suggestions and you will begin to see results. Here’s to stress control.