Rethinking how you schedule your days can set you free.
While some things may be out of our control, much of our life comprises the choices we make – including how we manage our time, or don’t.
Our drive for productivity has us so caught up in optimising efficiency that we can spend hours managing our schedule, leaving less time for getting things done (or making time for self-care).
Tight time management can become counterproductive, leading to stress, anxiety, and burnout. When the usual techniques don’t seem to be creating space in your life, anti-time management can be a refreshing way to reduce stress, improve your focus, simplify, and even promote productivity.
Shifting priorities
When you stop actively trying to manage your time, you’re able to focus on your energy, emotions, and priorities. Take a hard look at your daily to-dos and check in with how you’re feeling. What can you let go of? What can wait? What if you prioritised one thing for yourself before filling your day with everything else?
So next time, before you slip into uncontrollable chaos, look beyond the basics of traditional time management and try something new for a different result.
Prioritise tasks that have the biggest impact on your goals.
– Identify and eliminate tasks that don’t move you toward your goals.
– Base decisions on values and goals, not what’s most convenient or urgent.
– Focus on one task until it’s complete.
– Rather than checking off tasks, focus on results.
– Tackle five easy tasks first, and for every big-ticket task, perform three small items.
Experiment and make small changes to find what works best for you at this time in your life. Through that, you’ll be able to prioritise what’s truly valuable to you both personally and professionally. This will help you to stay on track and check things off your to-do list with greater ease and effectiveness.
Next steps
Try these tools to see what has an impact on your life.
– Structured – daily planner app.
– Brainwaves – an app backed by neuroscience and research to guide your brain through brainwave patterns to create powerful multistage experiences.
– Fellow.app – organise your schedule
– Superhuman mail – get through your email inbox faster.
