As a mother, wife, pre-school teacher and a part-time blogger, I badly needed to manage my time to take care of my family, my career, my spiritual life, my blogs and other things! In order to remind myself on what I needed to do each day and efficiently do each task, the following tips proves to be helpful and makes my day more productive:
1. Get a day planner and use it faithfully. I keep all appointments and reminder in just one place, my day planner.
2. Create a daily “to do” list. If you do this on your computer or mobile phone (sign up for free at Remember the Milk or Toodledo) , you can easily move around items as you prioritize the day. If on paper, you can code the items with numbers or letters for: Urgent, Need to Do Today, Can Do This Week.
3. Read your To-Do list first thing in the morning. Don’t open your Facebook account, Twitter, or email or answer the phone until you see the road map for your day.
4. Review your To-Do list at mid-day and end of day to see what was accomplished and what remains to be completed.
5. At the end of the day, transfer the items remaining to tomorrow’s or Monday’s list. If possible, remove any items that are not significant.
6. Let voice mail answer your phone while you are focusing on an important task.
7. Say “no” as often as possible when you have reached your work limits. I don’t do overtime at school or taking work home. When we are mentally or physically exhausted we don’t do our best work and we need to say so.
It’s easy to stay on track with time management once you commit to changing your daily habits. Just put the above tips into action and you should see more free time throughout your day.
