Life is all about timing: 7 tips to get it right

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How many times have you wished that you had more time?

The key is in not spending time, but in investing it.
- Stephen R. Covey

There’s an interesting post over on Zen Habits called, Death of the Clock: Reclaiming Your Time. It gives the seven suggestions for regaining the control of your time. While I agree with the ideas on offer I belive there are at least 7 more:

1. The people you want to spend time with often won’t be the same as those who want to spend time with you. Decide what amount of your time you want to spend with each group and stick with it.

2. You will never get everything done. Prioritize your task list using ABC in a “closed” to-do list where “A” items were the most important (”A-1″ the most important within that group), “B” next most important, “C” least important or “A” to tasks to be done within a day, “B” a week, and “C” a month. ABC analysis is frequently combined with Pareto analysis.

3. Don’t fear change: Change can be daunting and you may be afraid to change what’s proven to work in the past. Even with the change being inevitable, one may be hesitant as being not sure where to start. Uncertainty about when or how to begin making a change can be significant.

4. Complete what you’ve started: Stopping and starting a task time and again so having to start from the beginning when you return to the original challenge is just a waste. Make sure that, once you’ve started you don’t stop until the task is in a state that you could easily pick up where you left off.

5. Don’t spend more time on your to-do list than you do working on completing the items that are on there. 30% of listers spend more time managing their lists than they do completing what’s on them. This is similar to analysis paralysis. Use a 80/20 (pareto) approach to hit the big impact items.

6. Listing routine tasks wastes time. If you are in the habit of brushing your teeth every day, then there is no reason to put it down on the task list. The same goes for getting out of bed, fixing meals, etc. If you need to track routine tasks, then a standard list or chart may be useful, to avoid the procedure of manually listing these items over and over.

7. Set goals and work on achieving these goals. If some time is not regularly spent on achieving long-range goals, you may get stuck in a perpetual holding pattern on short-term plans, like staying at a particular job much longer than originally planned.

Remember:

Once you have mastered time, you will understand how true it is that most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a year – and underestimate what they can achieve in a decade!
- Anthony Robbins

What do you think? Have I missed any points? Please leave your comments below:

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Originally posted 2009-03-29 07:53:06.

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