5 Ways to Use Your Time to Change Your Life

Note: This is a guest post written by Farouk Radwan, founder of the mega-site, 2 Know Myself.

“Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that’s the stuff life is made of.” ~ Benjamin Franklin

What is the most precious asset you own? Is it your house? Your investments? Your current skill set?

Nope. Even combined, they pale in comparison to what is an even more valuable asset. Your most precious asset is your time!

Just think about it. If you were to use your time wisely, you would be much more likely to acquire whatever other asset you’re after.

Whether you want money, influence or to improve the relationships you have with others, the proper use of your most valuable asset will put you far ahead of the pack.

There is nothing more deserving your careful consideration than how you invest your time. Because of the extreme importance of time I decided to write this post to tell you how to use it wisely.

5 Effective Time Management Tips

1. List the Tasks You Want to Accomplish

One of the reasons people procrastinate and waste time is because they don’t know what to do or which task to tackle first. When you have a predetermined list of tasks that you’re going to follow, you are very likely to procrastinate less.

In addition, writing allows your subconscious mind to absorb your goals and thus help you perform them with less effort.

2. Have Flexible Zones

Let’s suppose you have to write a blog post but can’t come up with anything to write about. In such a case you have to be flexible enough to shift to another task quickly and come back to writing later.

If you have important work on your computer when the electricity suddenly goes out, you can immediately do another offline task while waiting for the electricity to come back on.

3. Wake Up Early

Do you know what activity consumes more time than any other? It’s sleeping! If you sleep more than 8 hours a night, you seriously need to examine your sleeping habits to save some lost time.

When you wake up late, you have less discretionary time available and become less motivated to attack your to-do list. You might even end up procrastinating until the day is over.

Seven to eight hours of sleep is great. Don’t sleep more than that.

4. Dedicate a Certain Amount of Time to Each Zone

Let’s suppose you write a blog post each day. Figure out the average time it takes to write the post. Subtract time wasters that add minutes to that average time. Then allot that amount of time to that particular task.

Let’s suppose you discover you need one hour to write a blog post. In such a case you should never spend more than 1:15 minutes writing. If it happens that you exceed that time, stop writing and move to another task.

While this may annoy the heck out of you on the day you do it, it will prevent you from exceeding the allotted time in the future. It will build discipline and you’ll soon be surprised at how much you learn to fit in the limited time you allow yourself.

5. Be Motivated

Sometimes you might procrastinate because you don’t really believe that the plan you are following will lead you anywhere.

In such a case the problem is not with time management but with your motivation levels or even the plan itself. Examine your plan well to make sure it reflects your values, priorities and that you’re motivated to pursue it.

Otherwise, you’ll spend a lot of time going nowhere, wasting a precious asset can’t recover.

YOUR TURN!

  • What is your most precious asset?
  • What’s your attitude toward time?
  • What do you do to use it more effectively?

Please share in the comments below.

This is a guest post written by M. Farouk Radwan,  founder of 2 Know Myself

And don’t forget to subscribe here and get my free eBook, A Walk Through Happiness.

Photo Credit: Darren Tunnicliff