Everybody knows, that time planning is really important if you want to reach your biggest goals or to have more time for yourself and your family. But how to do it?
Lithuanian life coach, psychologist and time planning expert Milda Sabienė shares 5 key mistakes in time planning and how to avoid them.
- Lack of CLEAR GOAL. Do you know where you will want to be after 6 months? A year? 10 years? If no – it’s time to set your personal goals.
All successful people have really clear goals, because how can you achieve something, without knowing exactly what you want? - Lack of CLEAR PRIORITIES. Often people don’t think it is important to prioritize various tasks, and usually they start their work day from the easiest and simplest tasks.
But priorities are the key to productive work. Simply analyze your tasks, write them in a priority list and stick to your plan.
- Assigning priorities for URGENT but not IMPORTANT tasks. It’s really easy to get lost in pursuing your goals, when you need to react to urgent tasks.
Giving priority to urgent tasks isn’t effective planning of your time. Often, we just use urgent tasks as an excuse to not to do important and difficult job. So, when you’ve got an urgent task, you just need to ask yourself “How much will this work bring me to my goal?”
- MULTITASKING. Often people fall into the trap of multitasking. Theoretically it is possible, but in practice, you need 20-40% more time to do the same job and there is higher probability of mistakes. Only a small group of people are able to pay attention to more than one task at the same time, so it’s better to focus on one task at a time.
- DISTRIBUTION – distractors of attention. Did you know that you lose up to two hours of your time a day when you focus on distractors? Think, what would you be able to do with these two extra hours per day?
The main things which distract our attention are TV and social media, so when you are working, try to turn off your phone and check all notifications when you will have small break.
References:
Milda Sabienė (2019 March 4th) 5 laiko planavimo klaidos, kainuojančios produktyvumą. Retrieved from http://psichika.eu/blog/5-laiko-planavimo-klaidos-kainuojancios-produktyvuma/
Vaiva Misiūnaitė is recently graduated Organizational Psychologist from Lithuania. She is also interested in Transpersonal Psychology and alternative medicine. She is participating in a summer internship programme at Willingness Hub.