Managing Time

This year is already over, last year I had posted a summary on welcoming 2017 and ending 2017 there were no such post. The main reason to not able to write such post was missing focus from the time management. And managing time was so poor that I needed to dedicatedly work on time management from starting of 2018. End of year is the time when we look at back in the year and try to recollect and think about future goals and count on the mistakes so that in future we do not repeat them.

Work in the Nov 2017 had resulted in extreme burn out, it was so extreme that I had to take off for more than half a month to recover and be normal and start doing things again. In one side where this whole experience was completely negative and frustrating, on other side I had an opportunity to learn this and create a proper process and plan to deal with it.

With starting of this year I had closely started tracking personal activities and tried out various alternative through which I can record and see which part of improvement can contribute in better time management. To count few tools, these were Trello, Google Sheet, Google Keep, Google calendar and notes on physical notebooks. Noting down on physical notebook was one of the best approach I felt.

Offloading some of the things from active brain will definitely result in focusing on the things which matters most at the time and you will not have fear of forgetting any important tasks. To give an example, note things you want to finish on the day and strike out them when you are done with. This will also give an internal motivation because you will see things getting done. In worst case if you are not able to finish all the items in the list, you will at least know why they are not getting done and in next day you will have better plan to deal with them.

Not tracking on these things will some time result in the feeling that you have almost wasted the week but in fact you might have done so many things in that week. This feeling might result in huge demotivation and sometime will cause lack of interest in doing things with full enthusiasm.

Below are the list of top learning in this year related to organising things and keep positively moving on.

Be positive

Do not worry if you are making mistakes, worry if you are repeating it multiple times. Worrying too much will result in negative things like depression and anxiety.

Plan

Plan your day, month, year, project timeline or life. Having plan is better than having no plan. To give an example of its importance, when planning your day before the day starts you will know list of known things which you will be finishing and you will also sense some of the things which you will not be able to completely finish.

Process

Process is very important piece for a balanced life, it might not be perfect when you start creating it but when you adopt and iterate over it that will result in solid process which works naturally for you.

Track

Observe and track your activity, specially if you are having very hectic schedule. This will improve your productivity and will bring attention on things which is blocking your goal.

Take break

Time to time take off from everything you do and invest that time in thinking on what you are doing and where are you going, mostly weekends are the best time to do that. When you don’t take break and run without thoughts, later in some point you will realise that you are completely misdirected from what you want to achieve or your goal.

Sleep

Take good sleep of minimum 6 hrs and wake up early. Waking up early has magic feeling. When you wake up early you will notice you have earned few extra hours for the day. You can utilise that in places where you feel you are missing out.