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Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.
Theophrastus
What does time mean to you?
Time is defined as “the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole.”
In my opinion, this definition doesn’t do justice to explain how much of an important factor time is to our lives. Each moment that passes is time that we could be doing something life changing, enjoying ourselves, or spending time with loved ones.
Time is such an important aspect to our everyday lives. It is such a valuable gift, and we often don’t realize how quickly it passes us by, and we can never get those minutes back!
How we spend our time can determine so many things in our lives. How we spend our time can affect our moods, mental health, communication skills, productivity, relationships, so much more!
Are You Wasting Your Time or Spending it Wisely?
Many people think they are spending their time wisely, but in reality, they are not. When they evaluate what they are spending their time doing, they quickly realize they are wasting so much time!
I can’t tell you how many times I have wasted thirty minutes or more just scrolling through Facebook or other social media. Most of the time, I am looking at things I don’t even care about when I could be spending time on more important tasks. I believe this happens to so many people! We get caught up in things that do not bring any value or joy to our lives.
What do you want to spend less time doing so that you have more time to focus on something you love?
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If you want to start being more mindful and spending your time on things that truly matter to you, I suggest you start by evaluating your time! Evaluating your time will help you see what you are spending your time on versus what you want to be spending your time on.
It will help you decide what is important and what isn’t. It can be hard to change our daily behaviors and stop wasting time, but this is a great start to being more mindful of our time.
Change can only begin once you realize what needs to be changed.
People who evaluate their time realize that they can be more productive and effective with how they spend their time.
How Can You Evaluate Your Time?
The first step you can take is to be aware of how you spend your time. Create a time log and start noting everything you spend your time doing in a day, and also note the actual time it takes for you to do each of these specific tasks or how much time you are spending on them.
I would do this for a few days in a row because we don’t always do the same thing every day. If you keep a to-do list lying around, look it over and see what you are putting down to get done each day.
The next step is to evaluate the time log you made. After a few days of noting what you spend your time on, go back and look over the list.
Are there things on the list you can cut out? Are there things on the list that you should prioritize over others? Is there wasted time? Take some time to really evaluate what you spend your time on versus what you WANT to be spending your time on!
You’ll be amazed at the amount of time you are wasting throughout the day. Even if it’s small things here and there, that adds up to a lot of time!
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Questions to ASk Yourself
Do you ever feel like you just don’t have enough time in your day? Do you ever sit back at the end of the day and wonder where all your time went?
If you feel like you don’t have enough time in your day to get things accomplished, just know that you are not alone. Many people feel this way, including myself!
Questions you may ask yourself are
- What did I spend the whole day doing?
- Why wasn’t I able to accomplish the things I had set out to get done today?
- Why did I spend so much time doing XYZ?
- What went well during my week?
- What did not go well during my week?
- How is my work-life balance?
- Did I meet a big goal?
- What small tasks did I accomplish?
- Did I meet my goals at home.work?
- What is throwing me off my schedule?
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I ask myself these questions, and I get the feeling of not getting much done quite often. I sit down at the end of the day, feeling unaccomplished, wondering where all my time went! I am usually early to rise and late to bed, so I know that I have plenty of time to do the things I need to do for the day. But where did all my time go?
To me, this is one of the worst feelings! I like to know that my time is time well spent. We often waste so much of our day doing things that aren’t important.
What to do After You’ve Evaluated Your Time
Now that you are aware of what you are spending (or wasting) your time on, you can begin to prioritize those tasks and your time better. Set some specific goals (long-term goals or short-term goals) to help motivate you to prioritize your time! Have clear ideas and goals of what you want to improve on will help you tremendously!
I’ll admit that I am still working on my time management skills every day.
I have struggled with this aspect of my life for years! I have to continue to stay focused and on task. I had to develop new habits, and I use several tools to help with better time management.
Time Management Tips
Developing new effective time management skills can be difficult. It’s something you have to work on everyday, but you are heading in the right direction! Good time management skills are very important to have in life.
Learning a few new time management techniques can go a long way in learning how to manage your time wisely and be more effective with it. In addition, you can gain more self confidence, have better work quality, and have less stress by learning better time management skills.
- The first thing is to know how you are spending your time. This is great, because after reading the first part of this post, you should know how you are spending your time!
- Next, get a physical planner or use the calendar app on your phone to keep up with important appointments, dates, and your daily schedule. This will help you to prioritize and manage your day-to-day work and activities.
- Prioritize your tasks. Your daily schedule and to-do list are great, I use mine everyday, but they can become overwhelming. Learning to prioritize your tasks can help you get the most important things done first and possibly get rid of tasks that aren’t important at all!
- Learn to say no. Learning to say no can protect your time and ensure that you’re spending your free time the way that you want. Not being able to say no to things in your life is how your time gets consumed with things you don’t want to do or care about.
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It may take a while for you to start being mindful of your time every day, but the most important thing is that you are trying. Work on trying to line up your daily activities and the way you spend your time with things that are a priority to you.
Lost time is never found again.
Benjamin Franklin
Eventually, you will stop one day and realize that you are spending your time on things that matter to you, things that make you happy, and things that are a priority. You will realize that you are no longer wasting your time and that you are accomplishing things all around you!
Success is right around the corner as long as you stay dedicated to devoting your time to the things that matter the most to you. Distractions are inevitable, but being mindful of them will allow you to overcome them!
I hope that these tips help you evaluate your time and learn to manage it better. Set goals to help keep you motivated with learning better time management skills. I would love to know how it is going for you! If you have some tips of your own, please leave a comment with them.
Until next time,
Catherine
I can relate to accidentally wasting way too much time on Facebook (or Instagram)! Thank you for this important reminder to be careful with our most precious resource.
I do the same! Both of them suck me in! Sometimes we just need a reminder about how important our time is!
Very practical and doable tips here. Keeping a time log will surely help understand and evaluate the time better. Will start my time log from tmrw.
Yay! Can’t wait to hear how your time log goes.
I really do waste so much time and I really thought being stuck at home I would be so much more productive, but I’m still being pulled in too many directions. But you are right. There are so many time sucks, including being on social media.
I was the same. I thought being at home would allow me to do a lot more than it has.
Reclaiming my time because I’ve wasted so much time being otherwise minded. I can relate to this this on a person level. Thank you so much for sharing
You’re welcome! I hope you learn how to get your time back!
So true. Time is money. And for me If I have to complete my task, even if I don’t feel like doing it.. I’ll at least make sure that I spend Half n hour doing it everyday so that I don’t feel like I have wasted my day.
I have been surfing online more than three hours today, yet I never found any interesting article like yours.
It is pretty worth enough for me. In my view, if all web owners and bloggers made good content as
you did, the net will be a lot more useful than ever before.
I’ve been surfing on-line more than three hours as of late, yet I never discovered any interesting article like yours.
It’
This time gives Senku to reinvent extra tech together with gears.
I really like this post! I feel this way more than I’d like to admit, and it really bums me out sometimes!
Good article. I’m going through a few of these issues as well..
I hope this article helps you through some these some of the issues!
I find that if I make a “To Do” list for the day (or week) I get so much more done than if I just wing it. There is something about holding myself accountable to a written list that motivates me to cross off each item as I do them.
Great post! Thanks for your information!
You’re welcome!
This is good! It’s so hard to end your day like that. Good tips on changing your behavior.
I keep a to-do list that helps me to stay on track with my time management.
To-do lists are a life saver for me!
Great post. I have thought a lot in this last year about time. The slower pace of life and being with those we love spending time that is thoughtful. You are right , we DO NOT get it back.
This last year made me think alot about time as well! It was nice to have the slower pace to spend more time with family.
There are some days when I just have to shake my head at all the time I have wasted on silly things (surfing social media for instance). But what I have appreciated, is with everything going on in the world, my kids have been home for over a year now, and I have had all that time with them! It has been a blessing in disguise for sure.
I do the same thing when I waste time! This past year has had many blessings in disguise. I enjoyed so much time at home with my spouse doing things we normally couldn’t!
I agree! I’ve become very mindful about what I exchange my time for.
Such a great post. Being intentional with our time is really important and mindfulness helps us get there. thanks for sharing!
I agree! Thank you for reading 🙂
I 100% agree. Time is so valuable! Time is more important than a lot of other things we think are important.
I agree! It is very valuable.
Great tips on how to evaluate and better manage time. So many timesuckers that detract you from your purpose.
I agree! I get sucked into them often. I work everyday to change that!
Great article. We are working on reclaiming our time!
I’m glad! 🙂