Time is precious. So you don’t want to waste it. As it’s not still, so can’t, you hoard it. So what best you can do? Use it now. Do it well. I think these quotes fit well here.
Time is like river. You can’t touch the same water twice, because the flow that has passed will never pass again.
—Swami Vivekananda.
“We all have time to either spend or waste, and it is our decision what to do with it. But once passed, it is gone forever.”
– Bruce Lee.
On a broader level, whatever you do takes your time and effort. Your time means you have a few seconds, minutes, hours, days, or years to make your effort. If you want to make your efforts pay in life, then you need to use your time well. By well, I mean how aptly you use it.
If you can do so, the way you wanted, then I am sure you will live the life of your dreams. Otherwise, you will think you have plenty of time. So you’d waste your time. How so? You’d sit idle in your comfort zone. Once you enter this zone, you won’t reach your dreamland where you wanted to go. Then you’d regret in your old age how you had not used your time well when you were so young. So here are some tips I have learned in my life on how to use it well.
Start your day the night before
Before going to bed, keep your clothes, shoes, and other essential items in an earmarked area that you need the next day morning. So you can have them in no time. To be sure it would save you time.
Get up early:
When you get up early from bed, then you get a long day ahead. Then you can work more. So you plan your day accordingly. Once you plan, you can stay focussed and accomplish more. The best routine goes like this.
Get up early, answer your nature’s call, brush your teeth, wash your hands and faces, drink water, and go for a morning walk. If you don’t like walking, do some freehand exercises, do pranayama, and meditate for half-an-hour. It’d energize you. If you start your day with energy, then you’d feel energetic throughout the day.
Then plan what you’d do throughout the day.
Give priority to the jobs that you plan.
Please use the matrix to give priority to your jobs. The experts like Stephen Covey SR and Simon & Schuster recommended it.
When you focus more on quadrant-I, then you’d feel stress and burnout. More you spend on quadrant-II, you’d improve the activities in it. Even it would not only reduce your activities in quadrant-I, in the future but also avoid unimportant activities within quadrant-III and -IV.
Follow the time-frame for each activity.
Avoid time wasters
Make use of your driving time and lunchtime.
Listen to motivational speech or song when you drive. You can listen to a soft song or music at lunchtime. What’d happen then? Then all the negativity and stress within you would go away. It would lead to one result: you. You are relaxed and positive. Then, you’d make use of time efficiently.
Brainstorming time
Encourage brainstorming sessions on how to solve a particular problem- the problem may be taken from your homefront or your Workfront. Encourage the members to take part in it. It’s an activity in quadrant II. You should promote it.
Do the toughest job first.
If you don’t do it first, it will consume your energy until you finish it. So stress can build up within you. As a result, you can make mistakes in doing other jobs.
Declutter your home or workplace
When your place is cluttered, then you won’t think freely. If you don’t do so, so you won’t focus on the jobs in hand. Once you lose focus, the jobs would take more time. So the best option is to declutter your home or workplace. Do housekeeping for your benefits. It would certainly save time.
Do it now habit
Sometimes the problems threaten you, not because of its complexity but because of your mindset. What you do then? You postpone the jobs till tomorrow. But tomorrow never comes. At a certain point, you would have a stockpile of job loads. So you’d inch closer to procrastination. Then what is the way out? So make do it now habit.
Think before you do
Don’t jump to the problem at once. It needs some preparation. If you don’t prepare at all, so you may make some mistakes, resulting in rework. You know any rework wastes your time and effort. So think before you do.
So don’t waste your time.