Start the New Year with a plan.
As the start of the New Year people are often re-evaluating the past year and setting their resolutions to focus their time on different things in their life. But sometimes when thinking of these things it seems like there is just not enough hours in the day. Successful Women Made Here has compiled a foolproof way to plan your days to make more time for what is important in life and to you.
The best way to do this is to plan ahead each week for the next week. Do this by outlining all of the things that you know are coming up in the next week on a Friday. This way you can have the whole weekend to get ahead of the workweek, if needed. From this list look at each individual day and mark everything with an A, B, or C. These letters have different priority meanings. A is classified as a ‘Must Do,’ B is the category ‘Should Do,’ and C stands for ‘If I Have the Time.’ By doing this you are able to see where you spend the majority of your time.
You are able to see how you prioritize and outline the events that you spend the most time on. It also leaves you time to schedule and reevaluate some prioritize while also thinking about tackling those projects and tasks.
If you’re having a hard time thinking about what gets classified in each letter think about what goes into this time management matrix that helps decide what is urgent and important and what is not. Some examples are below but feel free to fill out your own with your own priorities that fit your life!
Urgent Not Urgent
Quadrant One · Deadlines · Crises | Quadrant Two · Relationships · Exercise |
Quadrant Three · Interruptions · Mail, reports | Quadrant Four · Trivia, busy work · Time wasters |
Important
Not Important
You’ll find that your time management lands into two dimensions that determine how you allocate your time. These dimensions are the perceived urgency of the situation and the perceived importance of the situation.
The hardest part of this evaluation and scheduling is the object of discipline. You need to be dedicated and realistic to your prioritizing and scheduling so that you will be able to stick to it. Start executing this for roughly a month and you’ll notice that it turns into a habit for you to execute the rest of your life.
