Time management starts with stepping back and doing nothing

Implementing time management skills into your life takes dedication and specific attention to many areas where you can improve on.  These specific areas differ from one person to the next but there are of course quite a few areas of improvement that are very common for all people to need to make better on.  Once such area is learning how to improve how much work can be done and the best time to do it.  So the question you need to ask yourself is: “When do I work best?”

If you want to be at your best at whatever you are doing, then you need to allow your brain to concentrate on one activity at a time.  As complex beings we are all capable of doing many things at the same time, but in doing so our main focus decreases immensely and we end up not finishing our main tasks or completing them with poor quality. 

If the task at hand is a complex one, consider whether you are working on several parts of the same task or if you are actually working on two separate tasks, which will indeed take away from your focus.  Although this advice seems very simple and goes against everything that we have been taught in schools and at the workplace, it is vital that you adhere to it if effective time management is your goal.

People are constantly preaching that we should work on many things at one time.  The old-school advice given to people that needed time management advice was to “multi-task” in order to be more efficient.  And after years of society telling us to live our lives this way, it may be hard to change to habits of concentrating single-minded, on one thing at at time. 

In order to reach your full potential, you must break out of the mind-set that has been programmed by other people.  As odd as this may sound, sometimes the the best way to be the most productive is to sit at your desk and do absolutely nothing for thirty minutes.  You are not to have the television or radio on.  You should not be smoking or drinking a cup of coffee.  Instead, you are to do absolutely nothing for thirty minutes, and longer if possible.

Time management sometimes means doing nothing but gathering your thoughts in silence each day, and long before you begin planning the day ahead.  Going into silence like this could be the single most productive thing that you can do within your day.  Your thoughts will become centered, stress levels will decline, and you will leave your moment of silence with clarity of what goals need to be accomplished that day.