Implementing New Year's Resolutions
Welcome to my first blog post of 2018, and I wish all my readers a Happy and Productive New Year.
I'm starting out as I mean to go on – taking more time for myself and accepting the kind offers of guest authors to write for me.
So today I welcome Isabel F William.
Isabel says…..
My name is Isabel Frank William, and I am a Consultant by day, and a Freelance Writer by night.
I’m trying to spread my blogging voice through informative and well written articles.
My areas of interest are well-being, mental health, self improvement, as well as beauty of millennial transitions in all aspects of life.
I am also a lover of literature and philosophy, a runner, and a Tai Chi master. And that's why I believe that sometimes it is just enough to enjoy a really good book, smooth jazz and a cup of coffee to travel somewhere else.
Great to “meet” you Isabel.
Here are Isabel's tips for new year's resolutions.
How many times have you wished for the day to have 25 or 26 hours? Probably more than once. Time management and organization have become crucial problems for everyone working and studying in the 21st century, due to the fast pace of life.
According to Sara Caputo, a productivity coach and consultant at Radiant Organizing, time management is not really as much about time as it is about decision management. Could this be true?
Whether you agree or not, there are certain things that you could do in order to organize your time in a better and more productive way and complete everything that you should in the designated deadline.
Follow these tips and make your New Year’s resolutions come true.
Sort Out Your Priorities
One of the most important things that you could do in your battle with time-wasting is carefully sort out your priorities and focus on them first.
If you have problems doing this, take a pen and a piece of paper and write down all your tasks for the following period. Now that you have everything laid out in front of you, try to determine what’s urgent and what should be done first. Make sure to know the deadline – if you have something that can wait a couple of days, leave it for tomorrow and focus on something else instead.
Organise Your Day In Advance
As we’re already talking about putting all our obligations on paper, it would be best to plan out your day in advance. If you already know all your obligations for this week, you could do this for the whole week as well.
Apply “The Rule of Three” – first, write down three things that you want to accomplish today. This step is the most important one, since it will help you actually achieve the desired result. Next, write down three things that are the most important for this week, and do the same for the whole year. That way, you will have all your priorities listed out in a visible place.
Furthermore, you can try the Pomodoro Technique of organizing your time – it’s a small time management technique that breaks your time into small chunks. Allocate 25 minutes to actually doing the task without any distraction and then take a 15-minute break, and repeat the process.
Protect Your Time
Time is extremely valuable and you should be very protective of it. If you know that there are things you should do, always say “no” to devoting your precious time on the obligations of others. Even if it’s your best friend asking for assistance, always put your own time first. Say you could help them later since the task you’re into at the moment cannot wait.
Use Artificial Intelligence
Why not use all the resources we have? There are plenty of excellent time management apps for all our smartphones, so actually using one can be quite productive. If you don’t know which one’s the best, take a look at this list of the best time management apps and choose the one that fits your needs. With the help of these, you can actually track your time and visualize the day in accordance with your “to-do” list.
Never Underestimate The Deadlines
Basically, deadlines are slowly killing us.
In order to manage your time in the best way, try to make a small calendar of all the deadlines waiting for you, and thus see what the things that need to be done ASAP are. Moreover, see if any deadline can be prolonged for a day or two. However, make sure to know what deadlines are written in stone – you don’t want to miss the college application deadlines or the ones for a very important project. Use colours for this one – write all the deadlines that cannot be changed in orange, while others can be green. Use red only for those that are of the utmost importance.
Finally, place that calendar somewhere where you’ll be seeing it every day, such as the refrigerator.
Prepare Your Meals In Advance
Eating can also take a lot of our time.
If you’re the kind of person to go to a local restaurant for lunch, then always take some percentage of your work there. Of course, you don’t want to bring something super important with you, but replying to e-mails or proofreading something, for example, are to-dos that could easily be done while eating. If you eat at home and prepare your meals, make sure to prepare them the night before, once your workday ends. Before going to bed, allocate an hour or two of your time and cook the meal for tomorrow. The meal will still be fresh even if you heat it a bit more the next day, and it will save you a lot of time during the day.
Get Rid Of Time-wasters
According to a research, an average person has five social media accounts and spends roughly two hours checking them daily. Even though this doesn’t sound like a lot, checking your social media accounts while working can interrupt your train of thought, which will result in further procrastination. Leave your social media accounts for when you finish work, or just allocate 15 minutes every other hour to catch up with your friends’ activities.
Just Do It
As Nike would say – “Just do it!” Say stop to procrastination and actually get the work done. Once you say this to yourself, you’ll have to take the work in your hands. The best tip would be to always focus on the things that are more difficult first, and thus feel at ease when you finish them.
Conclusion
Managing your time doesn’t have to be so difficult, as anything can be achieved in the 12 functioning hours we have during the day. It is always better to try and organise your time the best way possible then be sleep-deprived and still miss deadlines.
Follow some of these new year's resolution tips and you’ll see the difference.
May your 2018 be well-organised!
Over To You!
Thanks for those tips to help with our new year's resolutions to get everything done on time, Isabel.
As mentioned earlier…. I'm going to be a lot more protective of my time in 2018. And the “Rule of Three” (writing down three things to accomplish today) sounds a good one for me too! As is cutting down on unproductive social media time.
Please share how you plan to get more done in 2018.
