Time is the most precious commodity we have. We spend our time working to get the necessary material resources. The rest of our time we spend doing things we most enjoy and feel committed to. Prioritizing one’s time is, thus, one of the most useful skills a person can have.
In other words, a proper discipline will allow us to minimize the sacrifices we make in our personal and professional lives (regrets) while, at the same time, maximizing the time where we can do whatever matters to us most (fulfillment.) How and where we prioritize our time and how much of it we are willing and able to allocate for each, will determine the type of life we lead – one that’s filled with regrets or one that’s defined by personal fulfillment.
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Getting Your Priorities Straight
Most people go through life without a proper plan and vision in mind. And while this may work wonders in one’s youth, allowing them to, more or less, go with the flow, as it were, it can completely backfire on that person in their adulthood.
What you need to do here is to reach a high-performance, high-focus zone where you concentrate your full attention on achieving your plan or vision. Any distractions or process inefficiencies need to be eliminated as much as possible.
The best way to do that is to sit down with a partner or team to reevaluate and adjust your plan accordingly. Your initial conclusion may not be the most efficient one, after all, especially after various events happened, in the meantime.
What you need to do here is to reach a high-performance, high-focus zone where you concentrate your full attention on achieving your plan or vision.
Stay Organized and Plan Ahead
Work performance and being in control go hand in hand. When you find yourself scrambling from left to right, not knowing what to do first, is a perfect example of not being in control and a definite indicator that you won’t be performing very well on that day.
To counteract this problem and increase your flexibility, efficiency, and stress levels, you will need to craft your plan for the upcoming week carefully. It shouldn’t take more than half an hour. Below are several steps for your pre-week scheduling so that you can keep better track of what’s important.
- Review your vision and annual goals so that you can plan your next week’s actions accordingly.
- Analyze the next several months and adjust your calendar if there have been any new developments during the past week that could have changed anything down the line.
- Complete your weekly calendar with all the meetings and events planned for next week.
- Identify the most important events in each role.
- Select the time and date when you’ll do each of them.
Planning is a sure way to reduce stress and increase your efficiency. It will also make sure that no critical events will slip your mind.
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Time Conservation
Like we mentioned before, forming a plan or internal guidelines and sticking to them, will spare you from the many distractions that can be found at every corner. To stop procrastinating, filling your time with unnecessary activities, and to protect your time, in general, you should:
- Take on each task when it presents itself.
- Limit your time on social media and deal with your email and other digital activities effectively.
- Minimize or eliminate any meetings that are not worth your time.
- Avoid negative interactions, or people with toxic personalities as much as possible.
Tap into your inner peace
The best way to prioritize your time over the long term is to conclude that you can’t change or control other people, nor is their happiness your direct responsibility. Whenever you’re faced with these types of situations, tap into your inner peace and remember your vision and direction. For more information about how to prioritize your time, feel free to contact me on https://meetme.so/GregNichvalodoff or greg@inscapeconsulting.com.
