The worst days I ever have are when I realized I wasted large chunks of my day, or that I could have used it more beneficially. the sad part is I cannot reclaim those lost hours . Like Eminem said Life is no Nintendo game, where you can press restart. If you are anything like me, then you always have a million things to do, but you cannot seem to find the time to do them. Alas, I am sure there are thousands of us all over the globe where twenty four hours just does not seem to be enough.

Well, for us living in the twenty first century with all the technology available at our disposal, twenty four hours is more than enough. For one thing if I wanted to send you this blog post in the fifteenth century, and considering all the hustles I would have to go through just to get it to you, then I would probably not even have bothered.

The real question here is time management. I know the word now sounds over used. What is not nearly over used is its application in the lives of everyday people. Except maybe those in a boarding house. I say that cause my time in the boarding house, during secondary school, were one of my most productivity periods ever. And in retrospective, it must have been because I had a tight schedule, I drew up for myself at the time. I had no beeps, or alerts from phone applications to tell me where I had to be at any point in time. I just knew where I was supposed to go and went there.

To put all of these into perspective these are 6 approaches we can all use to make a more efficient use of our time.

Have a vision: I would say have not just a 5 year plan, and a 1 year plan. Have also a 90 day goal, monthly goals, weekly goals and daily goals. Having all your goals broken down into the most atomic of quantities would have you realize what is most important to you and whet you should be doing at this moment to let you move ever closer to your goal.

Have a to do list: I know you must have heard it before. Nevertheless write all the days you must do down. You can write it down into a dairy or add it to your Google calendar. when new appointments come up add it to your calendar immediately, before you forget.

Rewards: You can reward yourself whenever you achieve your goals. Some goals seem really large at the onset, and it may be appropriate to have a footnote reminding you of the reward you are going to give yourself. It will serve as a nice incentive to keep you focused on the goal at hand.

Productivity Apps: The number of downloads for productivity apps on the play store is high. Likeminded fellows like me are trying to better improve the time spent. There are lots of apps like (M.E) Habit, Don’t forget the milk, quick agenda, daily planner, reach your goals and a lot more. Of all the apps I mentioned I have at one time or another used them. The trick here is not to think that by simply downloading these apps, that your life is going to magically transform. It is not. Which leads me to my next point discipline.

Discipline: Even after writing down the nice goals, downloading all the cool apps, and being super hyped about the plans we have for our lives, one tiny bit is still missing. Discipline . Unfortunately you cannot simply download it into your gene. Just have the resolve to never be even a second late for your appointments. even just once.

Give your full attention: When you are doing anything, give it your full attention. I have myself been guilty of this rule several times. It has been undeniably proven that multitasking just does not work. If you are working on a project, just do ONLY that. Like now, when you are reading this post you are giving me your full attention(I hope).

Reflect: Iterate over your process over time. No process is perfect, and sometimes you would notice glitches in the way you organize your schedule. Hopefully it can only get better, when you see the problems with your schedule, and adjust it appropriately. Maybe you are putting too much stuff on your to do list. You have to be honest with yourself. After all you are not going to be graded for this.

With time, everyone would begin to see the change in you. your life would be a whole a lot clearly in what you must do at which time. and if you are anything like me, then you will be awhile lot happier from the using your time more beneficially.

Thanks for reading my post. I will love to hear from you.

Cheers.