What do you have in common with the richest people in the world? What do you have in common with the most successful people in the world? You have one thing in common with everyone else, no matter how much or how little they’ve accomplished: time.
Each of us has the same 24 hours every day for the number of days we are blessed with on this earth. Success is not how much time you have; It’s how you use that time. It is critical that you use that time in the most effective way to achieve what you want to achieve. There is no mystery here; it’s simply a matter of disciplining yourself to use your time wisely and effectively.
Based on the experience of people who have achieved what they set out to do, here are the 7 rules of effective time management:
1. Use a time management tool. There are thousands of them available and it doesn’t matter which one you use, it matters how you use it. You can use a simple spiral notebook, a three-ring binder, a planner, a PDA, a smartphone, a smartphone app, a computer program, or any other method. You can’t keep all your appointments, obligations and plans in your head and you shouldn’t try. Write them down, track your progress, and learn from this process.
2. Long, Medium and Short term plan. You should have at least a five-year plan, a plan for the coming year, a plan for the month, and a plan for the week. Then each day you should have a plan for how best to use that day.
3. Based on your long-term goals, develop a five-year plan. Make a list of the things you want to accomplish in the next five years. Keep this list in your planner and refer to it when making your annual and monthly plans. Be sure to put the time and effort into achieving your long-term goals.
4. Every year review your five-year plan and update it. Then develop a plan for how you’re going to progress on those long-term goals in the coming year. Write it. Write down in which months you will achieve each part of these annual goals.
5. Each monthly plan for the next month. Go back to your five-year plan and annual plan, and be sure to set aside time in your planner to accomplish these goals.
6. Plan each week for the next week. Go back to your longer-term goals and make sure you set aside time to work on them. Here you can reserve blocks of time – appointments with yourself to achieve it. If you don’t do this, the busy activities of daily life will take them out of your mind and you won’t be able to do them.
7. Plan for each day. For some people it is better to do it at night, when their energy is high and they can think clearly about what they have done that day and what they need to do the next day. For others, it is better to do it first thing in the morning. Use whatever method, morning or evening, works best for you. The important thing is to do it every day.
One of the first extremely successful Americans to use this method and was one of the first to write about it, his name was Benjamin Franklin. Millions of words have been written on time management since his time, but no one has come up with a better method than Franklin’s.
Spend some time setting up your time management system. The most important thing is to practice the self-discipline to follow your planning method every day. Almost all successful people follow a time management plan, and the most successful follow something similar to Franklin’s. It works and what can be smarter than following a method that has been proven to work.
Try this for a month and see if it improves the use of your time, increases your productivity, and makes you move faster toward achieving your goals. After a month or two, you’ll be convinced and have made effective time management a habit.