Another thing that makes effective time management so important is the fact that time is a factor that is so crucial in all of man\’s plans. In everything that people do, the time factor needs to be perfect.

Timing is everything in life. The importance of effective time management is a lesson instilled in us even in our childhood. Do you know the fable of the tortoise and the hare? It shows the wisdom and effectiveness of proper time management. It shows that people can succeed even in the face of seemingly unbeatable competitions as long as they know how to manage their time properly.

Effective time management, though, is not a singular skill. A person cannot hope to get effective time management skills with a single swipe. He or she has to have knowledge of the different elements of effective time management in order to get the whole skill. So what are the elements of effective time management?

1) Planning – effective time management requires a person to plan. Effective time management requires a person to think before acting. Effective time management means being able to properly plan your tasks before you have to actually do them. This way, you will be able to a lot the amount of time required to performing each task. You also need to know the fact that planning beforehand will save you a lot of time since after the planning is finished, all you would need to do is accomplish the tasks that you have planned.

2) Prioritization – a great deal of effective management is prioritization. You need to prioritize your tasks. Do what needs to be done first. You should learn by now how to judge the significance of different tasks. You need to learn how to a lot time properly in order to accomplish the important tasks first. This way, you would be able to accomplish the vital stuff first. This is an essential part of effective time management as this would allow you to do the tasks that actually matter the most to you.

3) Focus – you need to remember that although prioritization is important in effective time management, the importance of tasks are always relative. This is the reason why focus is also an essential part of effective time management. You need to focus in achieving a certain goal before moving on to the next one. In two goals, there could be two important tasks. However, you need to finish the least important task of one goal before you can move on to doing the most important task of the next goal. Focusing on individual goals will help you in effective time management.

4) Discipline – even if you have a great plan, you need to have discipline to stick to that plan. Effective time management means having the discipline to actually act on your plan. Your self discipline determines the actual implementation of your plans. Effective time management is what you make it.

*********For more information about Effective Time Management be sure to follow the link in the resource box below to receive your free home business Cd.

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1. Use a timer.
   Pick one item on your to-do list,
   set your timer for 15 minutes and get to work. Don’t worry about finishing, just get
   started. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed and get nothing done at all. Tackling tasks in
   small chunks helps you stay focused.
2. Delegate.
   Don’t be afraid to enlist the help of others
   to complete projects that are time consuming or monotonous. Whether you have to
   hire a professional or your 10-year old son, do it.
3. Set goals.
   It’s much easier to get something done if
   you know exactly what it is you’re working toward. Set long-term goals first and
   then determine the short-term goals that will serve as stepping stones toward the
   larger goal.
4. Sort mail immediately.
   Mail can quickly become
   beastly, taking over every nook and cranny. When you get your mail each day, open
   it directly over the garbage can. Most likely, the bulk of it can be dropped right in.
   For the rest, determine what action needs to be taken and deal with it
   appropriately.
5. Make an appointment with yourself.
   Schedule at
   least one hour each day for “catch up” tasks such as work overflow, returning phone
   calls, answering emails etc. If you pencil time into your calendar, you’re less likely
   to let the mundane (but necessary) tasks pile up.
6. Become friends with your voice mail.
   Don’t be a slave
   to the phone. It really is OK to let voice mail get it once in a while.
7. Have an assembly line mentality.
   Complete like tasks
   together such as returning phone calls, answering email, sending out invoices etc.
   You’ll be much more productive.
8. Work when you’re most alert.
   Figure out your most
   productive time of day and set your work schedule accordingly.
9. Use checklists.
   For tasks that must be completed on
   a regular basis, make and keep simple checklists to ensure you don’t overlook
   important steps in the process.
10. Give everything a place.
    Don’t waste your time trying
    to find things that seemed to have disappeared. Organize your workspace so that
    every item has a home. It’ll make locating and storing items a snap.
11. Be prepared.
    Reserve 5 minutes at the end of each
    day to review your schedule for the next. That way, you’ll have no surprises.

Amy Andrews is the owner of SimplyComplete.com, where businesses & individuals hand off their “got-to-dos” so they can focus on their “want-to-dos.”

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And that’s what planning an ideal week or month is all about! Before you clutter it all up with ‘busy stuff’ you need to plan the big rocks in first!
What would those big rocks look like?
I believe that they would be things like, firstly ME time, then family or partner time
Daily Exercise is essential, because without your health, all the wealth is pointless.
Time for friends. I make a time on Thursday nights and Sunday mornings to make contact with distant friends, to ensure that these friendships don’t fade due over time?
Date night is another favourite for me, every Friday at 4pm date night starts in our home, this is family time together, off to the beach, or a movie inside with popcorn, or Dinner under the table for a change! Everyone gets a chance to contribute their ideas and we all run with the concept of the week.
Best of all with this idea it creates a sense of tradition and what I call family ‘Folklore’ stories and photographs to be reminded of in the future.
After this you can put the external bookings in, work commitments and the other items I mentioned a minute ago.
When you book these work commitments in think firstly of what is real Dollar Productive Activity. Prioritise that first into the most productive part of the day, first up until lunch time.
Other administrative duties can be scheduled later on, and of course neither should ever steal away your ‘me Time’ each day!

Start today to plan out an ideal week, share this with your partner and family, even you work colleagues if that will get them to understand you priorities at this time. Review your ideal week regularly to ensure it is still current and effective.
Another good way to look at the really big picture and start to plan an ideal life is to have a look at my website www.Onehundredthingstotrybeforeyoudie.com , and there you will find a list of things that people have contributed to the big life list.
Have a look and see how many you have done, and would like to do.

Grant Thorpe is an internationally recognized achievement based Business Coach, Mentor and Professional Speaker.

His specialty as a coach is working with high performing entrepreneurs, business owners, CEOs, corporations and salespeople from around the world. With a business coach, you will heap success on success until you gain the balanced and rewarding life you desire and know you deserve. Read more about the results Grant Thorpe can achieve for you on his website at http://www.grantthorpe.com

“He can give you the how, enable you to sidestep the distractions and define, focus on and achieve the things that really matter to you”.

Grant Thorpe is also the author of the book ‘Easy Million Dollar Idea’, download your free copy from http://www.easymilliondollaridea.com

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Most people work at their computers 8 to 10 hours a day. That is 40 to 50 hours a week. People work harder and harder. They think they are productive with working straight all day long. Some people feel that they get more done. However, our bodies are designed to move. The long hours on your computer causes your muscles to stiffen. Your body becomes fatigued. Your productivity therefore starts to go down the drain.

What can you do to energize your body? What can you do to be more productive? Here are 5 steps in staying in shape at your computer.

1. Stretch your body. Stand up, raise your hands above your head and reach for the ceiling. Hold this stretch for 5 seconds. Then repeat it 3 more times.

2. Shoulder rolls. To loosen those tight, stiff shoulders, stand up and bring one arm backwards then the other arm. Repeat 5 times.

3. How about your neck? Sit up straight and hold your head high. Relax your neck. Gently touch your right ear to your right shoulder. Hold for 5 seconds. Then touch your left ear to your left shoulder. Hold for 5 seconds. Repeat this 3 times.

4. You only have one back. Take care of it. Stretch your back while you are sitting in your chair. Slowly bend your upper part of your body between your knees. Hold for 5 seconds and sit up. Repeat this 3 more times.

5. Breathe, Breathe, Breathe. Take a few slow and deep breathes in and out.

By staying in shape means moving your body. You will get your blood flowing. You will clear your mind and get more done. Take a break once in the morning and once in the afternoon. It is your choice. Choose to become more productive.

Amanda Young, founder of The Time Mastery, specializes in helping people get more done in less time in business and personal life. To learn more on how to get more done today visit http://www.thetimemastery.com

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This is based upon a short tips article I wrote a while back on Helium.com that I’ve expanded further and tried to apply to the writing discipline. There are lots of ways you can try and manage your time better and many people will tell you alternative ways but I have stuck to six ways to help manage your time and be more efficient that I have always found work for me.

1. Divide your day into time slots if possible and allocate slots to activities.

Look at all of the broad activities or types of activity that you need to do on a daily basis. Allocate time slots to each activity and keep to it. From a writer’s perspective, decide when in the day you want to do your writing. Try and ensure that everything else you have to do can be done outside of this time and leave the slot free to get on with your writing. If, like me, you’re not a professional writer, you’ll most likely have to approach this the other way around by identifying when in the day you could reasonably expect to be able to write and then plan all of the other activities to ensure you don’t encroach on this part of the day.

2. Always keep a list of your ‘things to do’ – when you get each one done, cross it off the list and remember to keep adding the new tasks as they come up.

From the writer’s point of view, this is much more about making sure that the non-writing things don’t blindside on a lazy Sunday afternoon when you were about to get started on an important article. You should, however, be similarly organized in the practical or administrative tasks that relate to your writing. By being methodical in the small tasks that you need to do, you will find you can clear them a lot more quickly and, if things are written down, you can avoid too many unpleasant memory-related surprises.

3. Most people feel productive at certain times of the day and less productive at other times. Try and figure out which times of the day suit you best and work with it.

Have a look at the Where, When and How to Write section of freewritingadvice.com for some more information on identifying your productive periods, as this will influence what work you do at what times of the day. Knowing your productive periods in the day helps enormously with point 1 – dividing your day into time slots.

4. Be methodical wherever possible. Don’t go off on flights of fancy.

Make sure that there is a reason and a benefit to what you are doing, otherwise you may just be adding to your unproductive time – do the important stuff. It’s all too easy to find something that you’d like to do rather than what you need to do. If you avoid being sidetracked from your planed workload, you can be more effective in the long term and you will get time to do the things you want without feeling guilty about it.

5. Understand the difference between urgent and important!

This can be quite difficult. The temptation is to see everything that’s urgent as important, because it’s urgent. By making the distinction, you can concentrate mainly on what’s important and you will start to see that maybe some of the urgent stuff isn’t just as important as you might have thought. Ruthlessly prioritize the things you need to do, so that the time slot you allocated (remember point 1?) is effective and hits the important stuff. Things that are important and urgent will obviously be at the top of your list and you can clearly see what needs to be done first.

6. Wherever possible – delegate! This allows you to focus on a few tasks being done properly rather than a multitude of tasks being half done.

Yes, this is hard, if not almost impossible to do at home, but if you can get some assistance with the mundane to make time for your writing; try and do so. Maybe you want to trade help with someone to allow them to allocate a part of their day similarly to whatever it is they want to do. You help them, they help you – it just might work!

Do you want to get started as a writer? Do you want to improve the standard of your everyday writing? If so, visit freewritingadvice.com for punctuation, language and grammar tips as well as articles on creative, non-fiction, article and even technical writing.

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The first step is to find a system that fits into your lifestyle. There are quite a few different To-Do systems available on the market today. From software and online applications to complete training programs proven to increase productivity, but even the old pen and paper method will do as long as it’s something that you’re comfortable with and something you will use on a consistent basis. You’ll want to make sure whatever method you choose fits well in your lifestyle. Even if it comes down to the way one looks over the other, having a list system that’s pleasing esthetically can be just as important as having one that’s functional.

Now that you’ve decided what system or method will work best for your to-do list you’ll need stuff to do. To get started you’ll basically want to take every task you can possibly think of and write it down. Once you have everything that will go on your list you can begin to separate and organize all of your tasks into different categories. Keep your categories as broad as possible maybe business and personal and high and low priority.

Once you’ve decided how to categorize your list you can start actually listing your “to-do’s”, this where you want to break everything down. It’s very important to list your specific tasks and not just the general idea. A good example would be rather than “build a fence” you break it down to “get wood and nails”, “clear area”, “set pots”, etc… (This may not actually be how you would build a fence but you get the picture.)

The final and most important part of increasing productivity by creating lists is to prioritize. You won’t really be productive if you don’t get things done. Once you have your list created, take a look at every category and decide what gets priority. Be realistic and schedule out all of your items over a fixed time period. Once each task is complete be sure to check it off, not only does this keep your organized but it will also proved you with a sense of accomplishment knowing that your being productive and surpassing your goals.

Daniel Enos is the creator of snoozeeffect.com – a website providing tools and articles for increasing productivity in life without feeling overwhelmed. http://www.SnoozeEffect.com

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What these complainers did not understand is that Tony’s time is probably worth ten of thousands of dollars an hour. In case you did not know it the guy is worth in the neighborhood of a billion dollars. So, when you navigate in that stratosphere you have to prioritize your time. You have to concentrate on the major and forget the minor.

Being productive requires prioritizing the available time first and then it means being on focus. A definite objective needs to be established followed by a specific plan and finally, a controlled execution of the plan has to be directed.

The main roadblock to productivity is procrastination. In any major endeavor there will be some stumbling blocks and some major problems. That’s when procrastination shows it ugly head. Taking the easy road is the natural thing to do, so, when facing a stone wall, the natural tendency is to be distracted and concentrate on matters that are not relevant to the progression of the project on hand.

Work does not necessarily mean productivity. I have coached many up and coming young lions who were committed to succeed in business or in their professional life. One of the major point that had to be stressed with these guys was that there is a huge difference between business and busy-ness. Fussing over which tie should be worn today is not productive time. Planning an important phone call that could result in a big contract is quality and productive time.

Time and energy are restricted assets. They must be well invested. To accomplish that productively we must take on two roles. We must be the director and the manager of our time. The director’s role is to determine to road or path that will lead to the objective sought and the manager’s job is to make sure that we stay on that path.

Lastly, if we want to be productive, we must concentrate on our sphere of influence and not on our sphere of concerns. This needs a bit of explaining. We are surrounded by things over which we have control, that’s our sphere of influence and we are also surrounded with things over which we have no control and that our sphere of concerns.

Needless to say that whatever time spent worrying over our sphere of concerns or the things that we cannot change is a total waste of time and energy. To be really productive, we have to be disciplined which also means having control over our mind and the best way to exercise that discipline is by staying focus on what we can change and stop worrying over what can happen to us.

To succeed in any endeavor, we must be productive and to be productive we must be proactive in prioritizing, in managing procrastination and in exercising focus control. Time is money and the way that we use our time will determine the amount of money that we will earn. Simple application, huge results.

Dr. Raymond Comeau aka Shamou is the Author of ShamouBlog and Administrator of Personal Development for Personal Success Forums.

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2) Keep yourself organized:-
Take some time to organize everything at home. Keep your room tidy, iron your clothes, etc. You may have to organize your documents. Keep yourself informed about the things that are happening round you.

3) Cook a new recipe:-
Learn to cook that new recipe that you always wanted to learn. You will have a sense of satisfaction after you eat something which you made all by yourself.

4) Study for an upcoming exam:-
Studying is the only way to de-stress yourself before an exam. Prepare yourself to avoid last minute preparation so that you perform in your exams better.

5) Spend time with friends:-
Spend time with friends discussing your subjects. This will make learning easier. This way you will help each other and make learning a fun activity. Teach each other. Go out for an outing with your friends. Go to that picnic spot you have never gone to before.

6) Learn something new:-
If you thought of learning a new skill and never got to learning it, then this is a good time. Go learn swimming, learn how to use a computer, a hobby, music etc.

7) Attend a seminar:-
Attend a seminar or a leadership empowerment workshop or assist in conducting a meeting/workshop. This will keep you motivated. Volunteer in organizing and conducting such activities.

The author, Kishor is a handwriting analyst, an article writer and a blogger. He is currently working on becoming a self employed individual. Kishor invites you to learn more about him at http://www.kishorvr.com

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The definition Wikipedia gives for Parkinson’s Law is: “[...] a humorous observation (and not a scientific law) that states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”.

This basically means that the same job gets bigger and bigger the more time is available to complete it. So because there is more time available it also seems like you need more time for it.

So how can you use Parkinson’s Law? Well, sometimes we can just observe that things work like this. If we get an assignment that has to be finished in 24 hours, and it’s quite a lot of work, there is not much time to loose and we have to focus on the essentials. If we would get six days for the same assignment, we have six days to use our imagination to make it look huge. We don’t want to do that, but because there is no tight deadline we have a lot of time to think about a lot extra things in stead of just what’s necessary.

When things get bigger and bigger in our minds because of this, we might start to feel intimidated, and that will most probably cause procrastination. This is by no means scientifically proven, but I can tell from my own experience that it seems to work this way! So when we are aware of this we can use this knowledge to avoid getting stuck in the same situation over and over again.

You could implement this in your workflow by making sure you have a limited amount of time for a task. There is no time for too much procrastination then. Even if there is more time available, you don’t always have to use it all. And then really focus on the essentials! Don’t get carried away by insecure thoughts or fear, just do what you can do in the given time and then you can honestly say you did the best you could. Setting a deadline for yourself can be dangerous, so you might want a motivation from outside.

http://www.streamlinedmind.com/

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The more efficient you are when you are at work, the more time you will have for other things as well. Everyone has the tendency to get caught up in the small things that take up too much time and it doesn’t have to be that way.

Here are a few tips to help you to be more efficient:

1. Set up a planned work schedule. When you do things in a random manner, it tends to eat away at your time. When you schedule out what you need to accomplish, you can make sure you use that time more wisely instead.

2. Delegate as many tasks as possible. The more help you can get, the better. There is no use in trying to do every single thing. Whether this means hiring an assistant or a professional service, you can free up quite a bit of time to do what you do best.

You cannot create more hours in the day. But, you can accomplish more in the hours that you do have when you manage yourself wisely. This will allow you to be as effective and efficient as possible.

Learn how to attract love, money, or happiness or all three in YOUR LIFE NOW! Go to http://www.successfulfather.com and SIGN up for the FREE newsletter and BOOKMARK the site and return as often as you can!

You can attract the life that you truly desire! All you have to do is learn HOW!

Law of Attraction Secrets

Bryan Appleton is an investor/entrepreneur who has dedicated himself to teaching others how to achieve their dream life. He is also a proud single father with one son.

You can publish this article as long as you leave it intact and in full as well as keeping the URL link clickable.

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