Time Management

Time is one of the most valuable resources that we have, because you cannot replace it or get it back. Once it is gone, it is gone.

That is why you need to start incorporating time management techniques to stop wasting your time on a daily basis.

These are the top 10 ways you will save time by cutting waste out of your schedule:

1. Failing to Stop and Think: When you spend too little time in preparation, you are forced to spend too much time in execution. The time you invest in collecting, compiling, and organizing your thoughts before you begin a project pays off in time savings and in the quality of the outcome.

2. Multitasking: This is an extremely ineffective way to apply time management skills. In fact, researchers say that when you multitask you are making your brain take time to switch to a different skill set and a different memory experience.

Even thought, sometimes multitasking is not optional, here are some ways to avoid being on this situation:

a. Turn off your cellphone or the ringer on the land line, or forward your phone to go directly to voice mail, when you are working on something important.

b. Set your email program so you are not notified every time you receive a new message.

c. Log off from Facebook and Twitter

d. Set aside blocks of uninterrupted time for your work.

3. Working without brakes: Be aware that there is a point where your focus and concentration start to fall dramatically. You should take frequent breaks but for very short durations.

4. Demanding Perfection: This is not a way to apply time management resources, because the amount of time, effort, energy, and emotion required to achieve perfection dramatically reduce production. You are much better off investing your time and energy in starting something new than focusing on perfection.

5. Worrying and Waiting: These are two time wasters that can undermine your success and happiness in life. Worry usually comes from dwelling on factors that you cannot control. Also, if you are spending time worrying, you are not spending time on ways you can prepare or avoid such factors.

a. What am I really worrying about?

b. What can I do about it?

c. What will I do about it?

d. When will I take action?

6. Hooking up to the tube: According to the Nielsen Company, the average person watches more than 28 hours a week of TV. Think how much further away your business will be, if you would invest that time into time management strategies and growing your business.

7. Surfing the Web: The internet is an incredible time management and time saving resource, but it is also a storehouse of useless information. When using the internet for research or information-gathering, it pays to stay focused on your mission: What are you in search of?

8. Getting caught up in junk mail undertow: As if it were not enough to be inundated with credit cards offers, catalogs, and direct marketing materials in your mailboxes, now your e-mail in-boxes are slammed with unsolicited tidings, commonly known as spam. Some statistics shows that the average person wastes too much time sitting through both paper and electronic mail to make sure they do not miss critical correspondence. Getting off all these lists is more of a challenge than it ought to be, but it is something you should think on doing.

9. Killing Time in Transit: If you do a lot of driving or currently use public transportation, you may want to consider how to use in a productive way all the time waste sitting on traffic or commuting. There are many audio programs you could use to turn you down time into learning time.

10. Spending time with negative people: One way to bring down your energy level, reduce your enthusiasm, darken your outlook, slow your productivity, and drain your glass from half full to almost empty is to invest your time in negative people. The more you reduce the influence they have on your life, the happier and more productive you