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When I was in graduate school and writing my thesis I needed a serious overhaul to my time management approach. I tracked my daily activities for a few days and realized that watching television was taking up too much of my time. I decided to limit my TV time to two hours per week. When looking at the list of shows I enjoyed, I decided that Golden Girls would be my guilty TV pleasure. Each episode is only 30 minutes, I’ve seen them all multiple times, and it always gives me a good laugh. Seemed like the perfect choice for my time management and stress relief goals.
Could you use a few extra hours in your day?
The article, 21 Ways to Add More Hours to the Day includes great tips, tricks, and short cuts that help you increase productivity and efficiency by identifying your day within these categories:
1. Remove Big Chunks – define the big chunks of time within your day that are not contributing to achieving your goals and dreams
2. Reclaim Gap Time – identify and plan for all the time spent wasted in between the important tasks
3. Triage -focus on the important things to avoid wasting time on “work” that isn’t really getting things done
Are you unclear about what big chunks and gap times exist in your day? Making more efficient use of the 24 hours you get each day will take a small investment of your time up front. In order to determine where you can save time, you’ll have to keep track of what you are doing on a daily basis.
Which of these descriptions sound more like you?
I LOVE the computer. Technology makes me excited. I love to see colorful charts and graphs. I think that time spent on my computer is my biggest time waster.
Does this sound like you? Then try, getKlok.com . It is a free electronic time tracker to monitor your time spent on projects, phones, meetings, and sales calls. There is also a paid version with advanced reporting and exporting features.
Technology can be too overwhelming. I prefer to track my time with paper and pencil.
Does this sound like you? Print out this simple time tracker worksheet to log your activities
Once you are able to determine where you are spending your time you will be able to determine how to better make use of it. Now that my thesis is long ago complete I can spend my free time trying to catch the Golden Girls episode where they crash a class reunion. It is one of my favorites!
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