Productivity and Time Management Skills to Improve Your Life

It is estimated that the average person wastes a whopping 70 hours per month in unproductive activities like watching TV, playing video games or surfing the internet. This is time they could have spent working on meaningful projects and getting ahead in life.

Time management skills are important for students. They can help you to become more productive in your studies and life. This article will teach you some time management skills that will give you a boost. Read more in detail here: how to improve time management skills for students.

Managers spend a lot of time balancing resource allocation in the commercial environment. Every organization has a certain quantity of resources to employ and spend in order to accomplish its strategic objectives, whether it’s financial capital or human capital. Ineffective allocation leads to loss and failure, while effective allocation leads to growth and success.

Because numerous divisions within a company compete for a limited pool of resources, delegation may become overly complicated and challenging. Managers and analysts must pay close attention and plan carefully, or resources may be allocated in a manner that is detrimental to the company’s overall aims.

The health and direction of a company’s operations are often determined by its resource allocation, according to stock market experts. It’s generally a stronger predictor than listening to the company’s long-term objectives. “Look at what they really do rather than what they claim they will do to understand a company’s strategy,” businessman Andy Grove said.

As a man, how do you allocate your resources?

Harvard management professor Clay Christensen argues in his book How Will You Measure Your Life? that people confront the same issues as organizations when it comes to resource allocation. Time and money are often our most valuable resources. In each of our lives, there are multiple competing “departments” (family, job, school, church, friends, etc.) clamoring for a piece of this finite pie.

Furthermore, Christensen claims that examining how we manage our resources is a smart method to assess what’s actually essential in our lives, just as a stock investor may examine a company’s financial data to see if it’s on solid ground. If you follow a man’s time and money path, you’ll discover what he genuinely values, not just what he seems to value.

Imagine an impartial analyst opening your life’s ledger book and reviewing reports describing how you spend your time and money. You inform the analyst that your education, health, and spending time with your partner are your top priorities. However, the analyst notices the following in your ledger book:

Time Spent During a Week:

22 hours spent on the internet
20 hours of work
8 hours of video game play
7 hours of hanging around with your pals
6 hours of time spent with girlfriend
3 hours of class preparation
3 hours of exercise
0 hours of pleasure reading

What conclusions would an analyst get from this study about your basic principles or where you’re headed in life? Would it depict a guy who prioritizes his girlfriend, fitness, and education? Or would it reflect a guy who is most passionate about video games, Doritos Locos, and Reddit memes?

I understand that looking at every element of your life, including your personal connections, via a data-driven, budgeted lens may sound a bit clinical. Examining your own “resource allocation” techniques, on the other hand, is a good approach to see whether you’re genuinely following through on your basic principles or achieving your objectives. It forces you to be honest with yourself about the guy you want to be and the man you are. It’s especially beneficial for tracking your progress on objectives that don’t provide quick or clear feedback, like strengthening your marriage or becoming a stronger leader.

How to Manage Your Personal Resources Effectively and Become the Boss of Your Life

So, how do you begin allocating your limited resources to the areas of your life that you wish to strengthen and support? The steps below will position you in the life’s corner office.

Step 1: Examine how you’re currently allocating your resources.

The first step in becoming a savvy time and money manager is to open your life’s ledger book and conduct an audit of how you’re spending these vital resources. Many businesses fail due to shoddy or non-existent accounting — the right hand has no idea what the left hand is doing.

Similarly, many men have only a hazy idea of how they spend their money and time, and they may avoid looking into the figures because ignorance protects them from a reality that would force them to make painful adjustments. However, if you want to be the master of your life, you must be entirely aware of how things are going in every sector – which areas are squandering your time and money with nothing to show for it, and where you can move those monies to boost your personal growth stock.

Use the following tools to harvest and capture vital data on how you’re spending your resources to obtain this honest knowledge. For two weeks, collect and record this information.

Mint. Mint’s free online service makes keeping track of your expenditures a breeze. Mint will ask you to link all of your financial accounts (checking, credit cards, loans, and so on) when you join up. Simply use your debit card as usual after you’ve linked your bank accounts to Mint. Mint records and categorizes your spending for you, and it generates a report every month that shows how you’re spending your money. You can tell whether you’re truly putting your money where your mouth is when it comes to your principles and ambitions with just a quick look.

RescueTime. The majority of us spend a significant amount of time on our computers and on the internet. Does the way we spend our internet time represent our stated basic values? With RescueTime, you can find out. It’s a subscription service that lets you keep track of how much time you spend on different websites and even how long you spend using different applications on your computer. You just need to register an account and install the application on your computer, and RescueTime will handle the rest. You will get an email report at the end of each week that details how and where you spent your time on your computer.

Time Tracker is a program that allows you to keep track of your Time Tracker is a free Firefox and Chrome browser plugin that tracks how much time you spend on various websites. It’s quite straightforward.

Time Tracker is a Firefox add-on that allows you to keep track of time.
Time Tracker is a Chrome extension that allows you to keep track of your time.

The Eternity Time Log is a record of the passage of time throughout the universe. Thanks to the plethora of applications and browser extensions available, keeping track of your time online is simple and seamless. But what about the remaining hours of your day? How do you keep track of how much time you spend playing video games, spending time with your kids, or exercising? Eternity Time Log is the name of the game. It’s an iPhone or iPad app that enables you to monitor your time fast and conveniently. Simply start the timer whenever you start a new action, tag it, and leave the rest to the app. You may get a report on how you spent your time at the end of the day or week. The Android version of Time Tracker operates in a similar way.

Pen and Pocket Notebook A tried and true favorite. Keep a small notepad and pen in your back pocket and record any money you spend as well as the amount of time you commit to all of your hobbies. It isn’t as smooth as the computerized life monitors, but it does the job.

Step 2: Set objectives for how you want to make better use of your resources.

Examine the findings after you’ve made an inventory of how you spend your time and money. Consider what an outsider analyzing the facts might infer about your most important values.

We, like a company, must be deliberate in how we allocate our limited resources. If we aren’t, we risk reverting to “default mode,” which is generally the road of least resistance – a weed-infested, overgrown path that leads to stagnation and no personal progress. That’s why it’s critical to spend our resources in a way that aligns with our beliefs and long-term objectives.

If your present spending (both money and time) does not reflect your ideal, set precise, purposeful objectives to align your reality with your ambitions.

To begin, establish a list of the most essential things to you. Keep it brief! “If you have more than three priorities, you don’t have any,” says management professor and popular author Jim Collins. However, you may choose three main goals for your professional life and three for your personal life.

Decide how much of your time or money you want to devote to each of your top priorities once you’ve written them down. This is quite basic when it comes to planning your money. When it comes to time management, though, there are a few distinct approaches. You may, for example, establish an hour-per-day or hour-per-week target. So, if having a side hustle is vital to you, set a goal to work on it for five hours every week. Make it a goal to spend 20 minutes a day studying your texts if nurturing your spirituality is a high priority for you.

Collins, who has sold millions of books, made the decision years ago to spend 50% of his workweek to creative projects, 30% to teaching, and 20% to other activities. He maintains track of how well he’s done in achieving his objectives up to this point in his life. (Photo credit: Flickr)

You may also keep track of how much time you spend on certain activities as a proportion of your total time. Collins set a target for himself early in his career to spend 50% of his workdays on creative endeavors like research and book writing, 30% on teaching-related duties, and 20% on everything else. He’s been keeping track of how closely his work life has matched these % targets ever since.

Step 3: Keep a careful eye on how you’re allocating your resources.

Understand that devoting your resources isn’t a one-time thing when you establish these new objectives to devote your time and money to what you actually value in life. You’ll revert to the default position if you don’t keep track of your progress, and you’ll find yourself wandering along the path of least resistance once again.

Collins uses a stopwatch with three distinct timers to keep track of the time he spends on each of his three areas of work throughout the workday. (Photo credit: Flickr)

Continue to monitor your progress and how near or distant you are from the objectives you set for yourself using the tools we laid out in the audit section. Collins maintains a stopwatch in his pocket with three different clocks and takes it wherever he goes. He starts the timer that corresponds to the category the task comes within (creative/teaching/other) once he starts a work-related activity. He pauses the timer that had been running and begins the one that corresponds to the job he’s presently performing when he moves to a task in a different category. He enters this information into a spreadsheet from time to time to update his running totals on how well he’s divided his workday according to his objectives.

You don’t have to be as meticulous as this, but you should devise some kind of tracking system to keep you on track.

Step 4: Refrain from doing things that deplete your resources.

Aside from keeping track of your progress, the most important thing you can do to stay on track with your resource allocation objectives is to learn to say no and make your life as simple as possible. In business, this translates to operating a lean, agile company with little overhead. It involves distinguishing the excellent from the great in your personal life, and refusing to take on obligations that aren’t in accordance with your beliefs and aspirations, even if it makes you feel bad. It also entails getting rid of the tangible belongings that need care and maintenance – the “stuff” in your life that diverts resources away from the areas of your life that are more important.

Mr. Collins’ ability to say no is one of the lynchpins in his very effective time management abilities, according to a New York Times profile:

“Mr. Collins is also an expert at saying “no.” Every week, he receives requests to deliver presentations to companies and trade groups. Given that he charges a top-tier price of $65,000 to impart his knowledge, it may be a lucrative sideline. However, he will only deliver 18 lectures this year, with around a third of them being free of charge to charitable organizations.

Companies also seek his advice. However, he usually rejects, accepting only if the firm fascinates him and its leaders travel to Boulder to see him…

Do you want to book a tour? No. Using the millions he’s made from his novels to splurge? No, not at all.

He and his wife still reside in the 2,500-square-foot Craftsman-style house they purchased 14 years ago when they returned to Boulder from California. With a team of five workers, he maintains his overhead low and adds students for research work as required.

Mr. Collins’ attitude — a readiness to say no and an emphasis on what not to do rather than what to do — originates from a discussion he had with one of his teachers, the late Peter F. Drucker, a pioneer in social and management theories.

Mr. Drucker asked him, attempting to imitate his mentor’s Austrian accent, “Do you want to create ideas first and foremost?” “You must not develop a large company because you will end up controlling it.”

As a result, little is beautiful in Jim Collins’ universe.”

Small is also wonderful in your world. When it comes to simplifying your life and getting rid of clutter, “downsizing” is a fantastic idea. To live a genuinely blue chip existence, give your money and time wasters the pink slip.

Time management can be a difficult task, but it is an important skill to have in order to improve your life. You will need time management skills if you want to succeed in any aspect of your life. Reference: why time management is important.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does time management improve productivity?

A: Time management is a popular subject with many different perspectives. Some people believe that time management improves productivity by giving individuals more efficient schedules and scheduling their days and weeks so they land on productive times of the day, while others think its more about how well you can balance your personal life with work responsibilities.

What are the 7 time management skills?

A: ʻOlelo No Ke Aupuni, Mālama Hou, Hana Kiki Ia O Ka Umi Au Kai

Why is time management an important life skill?

A: Since time is such a limited resource, its important to know how to manage it. If you dont know how much time something should take and have no idea when youll be able to do it, then guess what? Youre going to procrastinate on whatever that thing is.