I coach and speak frequently about managing time. My definition of time management is, “Getting a lot of things done that matter.” A lot of people get a lot done in a day, but much of what they do is busy work that doesn’t have a very high impact. The basic principle is that 20% of what we do accomplishes 80% of the results in our life that really matter. So the goal of time management is to reverse those numbers, we want 80% of what we spend our time on as the high impact activities of our life, and 20% of our time on busy work. The problem that we have to overcome is that the low impact activities are the squeaky wheel stuff in our life, they clamor for our attention so if we are operating our life out of our head we will be pulled to the “noisy” jobs and activities as apposed to the really important. The only really successful way to overcome this pull of the urgent rather than the important is to write a daily “To Do” list based on our personal goals. Now we have another problem to overcome. Most people won’t take the time to write goals or a daily “to do” list, because they don’t have time to. Makes about as much sense as not stopping to put gas in your car when it is on empty because you will be late where you are going if you do.
Time Management
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