Time Management Skills: Mistakes that Cost You Time

When you struggle with time management techniques recognize the underlying cause of your problem is your goals and your integrity with yourself. When you catch yourself constantly changing direction throughout the day, reacting and responding to every interruption, and spending a lot of time on low value activities understand that you need to get to the real source of your problems before things will get better. When you make these mistakes they cost you precious time and keep you trapped in a time deficit nightmare. You don't change directions throughout the day because you enjoy the extra stress and tension and like to waste a lot of time and energy. You do it because you haven't taken the time to develop a detailed plan for what you're trying to accomplish and how you would do that. You have a general idea of what you want, but you lack the specific actions required to get that and so you don't know what you really should be doing next.

When you respond immediately to other people and circumstances you are choosing to allow these people and circumstance to control your destiny. Responding reactively keeps you from following your plan, so your really following someone else's plan or no plan at all. You can't get what you want when you don't have a plan and you allow other people and circumstances to change your plans based on their wants and needs.

It's a whole lot easier to get caught up dong non-productive low value things than it is to do the real work that people are willing to pay you for. Consequently it feels more comfortable to yourself to get involved in these things. You look and feel busy and like you're really doing something, but you aren't. You have to hold yourself accountable for being productive. Doing so will not only improve your time management skills, but it will help you to get the results you want too. To get results you have to set goals. The goals you set must must involve the actual actions you will take. Free up time for yourself by taking action and then moving immediately to the next action. As you get more done in less time the amount of free time you have increases.

When you don't hold yourself accountable for actually taking the actions, and you allow yourself to make excuses for not doing what you know you need to do you're out of integrity with yourself. If you do this often enough it becomes even harder to get things done and maintain integrity with yourself. Each time you plan an action step your mind is going back to all the times when you said you would do something and didn't and your internal thoughts are telling you that you won't do it this time either. Those negative thoughts become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Going off on tangents and automatically reacting happens because you lack focus. You lack focus because you don't have a clear plan. And because you don't have a clear plan you don't know what the right actions are, so you can't take the right actions.

A poor time management mindset turns into poor time management skills. When you make excuses for yourself or place blame you aren't taking responsibility for yourself and your actions. Change your mindset and become a time efficient person by having and following your plan and take the actions you need to take.

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Author: Cheryl A. Clausen can help you get where you want to be. Great Time Management Tips get her free ecourse. Increase your Time Management Skills, look here.

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