Are you constantly feeling like time is slipping through your fingers and
there's just not enough time in the day to get stuff done? Well guess what? I have
a solution for you! Watch this video to learn how you can manage your time
better. Hi i'm Adriana Girdler, Productivity Specialist and President of
CornerStone Dynamics and MyVisualVIsion.com, and today we are going to
take a look at managing time. But first let me ask you this, What is free but
priceless, you can't own it but you can use it, you can't keep it but you can
spend it, once you've lost it you can never get it back? Well it's time! And
that is something we're gonna focus on today. I want to look at it from a
perspective outside of very simple tools and techniques, and I want you to take a
look at it from making monumental shifts in the way you look at time. So let's get
to it. Number one, my first tip is to analyze what it is that you do in a day.
So what you're going to do for the next five days.
my recommendation is you're going to analyze everything that you do, you're
gonna write it all down, everything, for the next five days. Because guess what, if
you want to make change, you want to be better with your time, you have to know
how you're spending it first.
So analyze everything, so if you're on social media,
I want you to write that down, with how much time you're spending on it, if
you're at work, write that down "work" but what exactly it is that you're doing at
work are you in multiple meetings, what exactly you're working on, so you want to
do a study on yourself to understand how it is that you spend your time. Once
you've done that and you're done the five days, I want you to then take a look
at your activities and break them up into three categories: the first category
is your goals. Anything that you're doing that is leading you towards your goals, I
want you to put them in that box. Anything that you're doing that is not
leading towards your goals, that is really a distraction, I want you to put
it in that box. And last, but not least, guess what, we
just have some things, because we're human beings, like sleep, that we have to
do, so you're gonna put it in that box. And now that you've actually taken
everything you've done and you divide it into these three specific segments and
you add up the time that you're spending on it and so you can start seeing where
exactly it is that you need to focus your attention on. Is it on stuff that
perhaps are not leading you towards your goals, or are you really on track and are
doing a lot of stuff that are reaching your goals, and perhaps you want to even
do more. this analysis is critical and helping you understand how to manage
your time better. tip number two is our actual goals. Now if you have goals,
congratulations! I think that's awesome and good for you. But if you don't have
goals, don't worry about it, you can definitely start looking at them. In fact
I highly recommend it. I have another video on personal visual vision
statement that I would highly recommend you watch too that really teaches you
about goals and goal setting. But here's an opportunity to reevaluate what your
goals are. Do they have to change? Do they have to be updated? Because now that you
understand the buckets that your activities are placed in, ideally you
want to move everything towards the "I'm doing everything towards my goal" bucket.
So really understand what that is. Spend that time to really reflect and rethink
and refine your goals. Tip number three: which is really interesting because
sometimes people don't put these two together from time management
perspective, and that is declutter! It's interesting because it is shown to us
that if we're around mess, it's really hard for us to focus, and then what
happens is we know we have to clean things up around us whether it's a messy
desk, messy computer folders, like our electronic folders, right? Or just
general speaking, things around us, so what do we do, well we ignore it, we find
other things to preoccupy our time with because we just don't want to deal with
it. So decluttering actually is a really
powerful tool to help you with time management. Now in my world of
productivity we do a 5S. But I'm going to teach you 3S's of those 5S's, and I want
you to think about these things in order to declutter. So how do you do that? Well
you do sorting you do straightening and you do sweeping. So let's first
understand what is sort. Sort is you sort out the necessary from
unnecessary items and dispose of those unnecessary items. Keep things only that
you need today handy, so if you have lots of stuff around you, and you have a used
for the last 6, 8, 12 months, guess what? Either donate it, throw it out,
or put it away somewhere else that you can go to and get it if you should need
it. Because we have too much stuff around us that's not helpful, so you want to
sort everything out. The next S is that straighten, and straighten is everything
should be in its place, in order, and everything should be easy to find, so you
want to make sure that everything has its place, so four folders on your
computers, you want to keep those nice and clean, so instantaneously you can
actually get them. Guess what, your keys when you walk home you want to make sure
you have a keyring and put that there. So straightening is really critical to
helping you with decluttering. And last but not least, the last S which is sweep,
and what is sweep? It's eliminating trash and dirt in your home or office, it's
pretty basic and generic but that makes a big difference if you have clutter
everywhere. It makes it impossible for us to get in that mode of really organizing
ourselves and being effective and efficient. So do that nice sweep and if
you can, do a little bit every day, it makes a huge difference versus letting
it pile up and trying to get it all done. So now what's the last tip? Well you've
analyzed, which is really important, you understand how you work, number two is
you've really refined your goals because you're going to focus all of your
attention, now that you know how you spend your time and your day, on setting
your goals, because guess what you're gonna be time management wizard, and you
got all the decluttering out of the way, good for you, so what is the last thing
you're gonna do in order to help you reach and better organize your time,
you're gonna schedule power hours. So power hours are a great technique to
allow you to be effective. So within your calendar, and an easy way is, once a day,
just set up an hour for something that's really important to you, that's a goal, I
want you to do that and down the road as you get really good with this you're
gonna set more power hours, 2 to 3 a day. You'll be amazed at how much you can
accomplish in your day. I also have other videos as
well, on how to structure your day, that even gives you more tips and techniques
too, so please check that out. So on that note, to recap how do we get better at
managing your time, well we go beyond just the typical tips and tricks and I
really want you to think about analyzing your day, redefining your goals,
ensuring everything's decluttered, and start scheduling those power hours to
allow you to work effective and efficient. Now on that note, thank you so
much, there's tons of information and links down below underneath this video,
under the 'show more' section, please check it out. If you can give this video a
thumbs up, subscribe as wel,l and please share this video with your friends and
colleagues because who would not want to manage their time better!