15 minutes of planning is a good start

Here is a quick mental test that you can do to see how well you have attempted to make positive results out of your time management:  Think about the last ten days, and ask yourself this question:  “How many minutes per day did I spend directly planning any of those days?”  Now before you start calculating how well you “planned”, keep in mind that time in the shower doesn’t count, nor does the thinking you did while jogging, or while you were driving.  Of course those are wonderful thinking times, but I’m referring to highly concentrated periods of thought where you sat down in a quiet room, closed your eyes, and visualized the entire day’s planned activities, and their successful outcomes. So, how much time did you spend?

If there is anything that you can do as a result of learning about time management, then it would be to follow the time-tested advice of spending fifteen to thirty minutes at the beginning of each day planning your time.  If you can start doing this, and be loyal about it 7 days per week, then I can guarantee you the results that you are looking for when it comes to time and life management will suddenly come to light.

Leverage Your Time

One very popular investment strategy into time management involves leveraging your time.  Leveraging in the business sense means to borrow money to increase the yield on your investment.  Ideally, the amount that is due will be paid back with interest, and you of course keep the profits.  Costs are minimal and the dividends can be huge.

Your time can also be leveraged in much the same way.  By investing small portions of your time into certain activities, you can actually free up time throughout the rest of the day.  And a daily planning session can act as a time lever.  Your “cost” is small; only fifteen or so minutes per day; but you will enjoy many more benefits from this “investment” all day long.  Examples of these benefits include more clearly defined tasks with deadlines, increased focus on more important tasks, less time spent between projects, and a greater sense of accomplishment, and an overall greater sense of success at the end of the day.

Having understood how little of our time is needed to invest into something that can give you so much benefit, isn't that worth a few minutes each morning?  The author of Getting Things Done, Edwin Bliss, said: “The more time we spend on planning a project, the less total time is required for it.  Don't let today's busywork crowd planning time out of your schedule.”