10 Time Management Mistakes Most People Fall
Into
Are you feeling overwhelm and are getting nowhere? Or do you
feel like you are having too much time and are feeling bored because you don’t
accomplish much in life? In this article, you will discover the 10
time-management mistakes most people fall into.
1. Never
envisioning or thinking about tomorrow.
This is very common and it is one of the main reasons most
people have a problem with time management. Great businessmen and women and
those who created extraordinary results in life are typically
visionaries. They see things
further into the future rather than just seeing things as they are
now.
When you think about how you are going to go through tomorrow,
you will better equip yourself with what’s coming. You will literally able to
see what needs to get done and what you need to accomplish. More importantly,
when you envision or think about the coming days, you will feel more motivated
because you are envisioning yourself creating the future you want and moving
one step closer toward your dreams.
2. Not planning
ahead.
“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”
There seems to be some truth in this saying. The majority of the
people plan their working days, but they never really plan their weekends or
their off days. Yes, you may say that on your off days you just want to be
“off” and doing nothing. However, if you do not plan for your weekend, you will
just waste your weekend thinking about what to do.
A lot of people wake up late on the weekend. They spend most of
their time thinking about what to do, what to eat and where to go. You don’t
have to plan every minute or every hour for your weekend. What I’m suggesting
is that you can plan for 3 to 5 activities that you want to do during your
weekend. For example, you can plan to go jogging in the morning, shopping in
the afternoon and have dinner with friends at night. You will at least fill
your weekend time with some meaningful and productive activities.
3. Starting their
day late.
If you study the success stories of all the great people out
there, almost all of them started their days early. None of them started their days late.
The man behind Starbucks, Howard Schultz, gets up at 4:30 a.m. almost every
day. Richard Branson wakes up around 5:45 a.m. to do his daily exercise. Apple CEO, Tim Cook started his day at 4:30 a.m. and
Procter & Gamble CEO, A.G. Lafley wakes up around 5:00–5:30 a.m and is at
his desk by 6:30 a.m. or 7:00 a.m. at the latest.
Can you see it now? Great people share one thing in common: they
all wake up early to do their most important task and they exercise before they
get to the office. If you start your day late, you will feel rushed throughout
the whole day. Just like if you start your day late, you eat your breakfast
hastily or even skip your breakfast; you may get stuck in a traffic jam and
arrive late; everyone will push you on your work, and your boss may scold you
for being late. Can you imagine how stressful the day will be?
4. Focusing on
doing the wrong thing.
Never ever forget your goals and your targets. Many people have
difficulty in managing their time because they focus on doing the wrong thing.
If you want to be productive, you must make sure you are working on things that
really matter and things that will
move you toward your goals and targets.
For example, when things get out of hand, people will focus on
the problem and start blaming each other. The right thing to do is to focus on
the outcomes and the solutions available to you. Just like if you are in sales,
don’t forget that your main purpose is to sell and not to call or meet clients
for the sake of calling them and meeting them.
5. Getting
distracted along the way.
One of the most popular time-management problems with most
people is that they get distracted along the way. A very simple example is that
when you are trying to do your work on your computer, and then suddenly you get
a notification from Facebook saying your friend commented on one of your posts,
so what did you do? You quickly turn to Facebook and check out what’s going on.
This is a very common thing that happens to most people. We get
distracted when some other things seem more “interesting” to us. As long as you focus on your targets and always keep
your goals in your mind, it will shield you from distractions.
6. Going through
each day without aims, targets and goals.
Do you know what you need to get done by tomorrow, by end of
this week and by end of this month? Most people never really have a goal or a
target. That is why most of them go through life without passion and
motivation. Successful people
always have a clear indication of the outcome that they want; that
is why they are able to move forward toward the future they desire.
If you don’t have a goal, how can you tell if you have reached
it? How can you know whether or not you are on track or are producing the
result you want when you don’t know what exactly you want? Today, if you go to
work without energy, with no passion, and you go to work for the sake of salary
and for the sake of working, you better stop reading right now
and take time to think about the future you want.
It is when you are absolutely clear with what you want to accomplish in your
life that you will be able to come up with the right things to do and
manage your time properly.
7. Not having a
to-do list.
Some people said that to-do lists are useless, because what good
is a to-do list if you aren’t marking off items? Let’s make one thing clear:
having a to-do list is always much better than not having one. The reason is
that the list helps you understand what you need to get done. When you know
what you need to do, you will be well-prepared.
Sometimes we may get so busy and forget what we need to get
done, and this is where our to-do list can come to help. First it prepares us
for what is coming and next; it
reminds us of what we need to do. It is all right if you did not follow
through with your to-do list in the first few days; what you want is to make it
into a habit, and then you will see how effective it can be. The main key to
make your to-do list works for you is to make completing tasks into a habit.
8. No rest and all
work.
This is going to be controversial and subjective. Do you think
that you are working a lot today or do you think that you are too free and not
getting much done? This is a very subjective question and it all depends on how
much you can take. If you are a workaholic, you may feel that you don’t have
enough time no matter how much you have actually put into work. On the other
hand, if you are not a workaholic, you may feel that you have done so much and
you just want to get some rest.
The point here is that you need to find the balance between
resting and working. And this is totally subjective base on each individual’s
ability. Some people can work till late at night and still feel motivated to do
more, while some people can’t take it after 6 p.m. When you feel motivated and want to get more done, do so. When you
feel tired, get some rest. After all, success is a journey and not a
destination. You need to rest in order to get more done.
9. Being too free
and not moving forward.
Sometimes you will feel that you are too free or you wasted too
much time on unnecessary activities and you are not moving forward at all. This
is the time when you need to think about your goals and what need to get done.
This is why you need a to-do list too. You don’t really need to worry about
committing to doing too many tasks or too few tasks; just like what you have
learned above, you want to turn
getting things done into a habit so that you will know how much
work you can take each day.
Most people will fall into this category of too free and not
moving forward instead of the other way around. You should be able to tell if
you are moving forward by tracking your results from time to time. If you are
not moving forward, it is time for you to think whether you are not doing the
right thing, or whether or not you do enough.
10. Being a
perfectionist.
Always adopt the mindset of “ready, fire and aim” instead of “ready, aim and fire”
approach. Always remember that no one is perfect in this world. We learn the
most from our mistakes, not from our successes. Therefore, just go
ahead and do it. Just like what Richard
Branson has to say:
“If somebody offers you an amazing opportunity but you are not
sure you can do it, say yes—then learn how to do it later!”
You don’t have to understand every detail to start. You can
start right away and figure the rest of the details which you don’t know. As
long as you are always in motion and moving, you will have an edge over people
who are always thinking but are not doing anything. Yes, you need to spend time
planning and thinking about your strategies, but more importantly, you need to
take action and act right away
Shawn Lim
https://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/10-time-management-mistakes-most-people-fall-into.html
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