It's About TIME!

Time management expert Michael Fortino conducted a very in-depth study called the Fortino Efficiency Index. His study uncovered a few insightful factoids about how we spend our time. According to the Fortino Efficiency Index, the average American spends... One year looking for misplaced objects. Eight months opening junk mail. Two years trying to return phone calls of people who never seem to be in. Five years standing in line. I never knew so many people shopped at Best Buy! I've been reading a lot about time management lately - not only for articles on TMFC but for help in my life! There's always a surplus of things to do, but a lack of time in which to do them. Below is the best of the information I've either come across or have discovered the hard way. Keep Yourself Honest. Get into the habit of periodically asking yourself, "Is this something worth spending time on? Is there something else I should be doing instead?" A great deal of time is wasted on the most ridiculous things - things that will not help us in any way whatsoever. One of the greatest time wasters going on these days seems to be e-mail. Most people make the mistake of subscribing to far too many newsletters and ezines, then simply fail to sort them out and ditch the dead weight. Think of each single newsletter you subscribe to and read regularly. One at a time, rate them as great, good, fair, or poor. Immediately unsubscribe to the fair and poor ones. I would imagine that most experts would say to ditch the "good" ones as well, but since good is just one step removed from excellent - I say they're worth hanging onto. Of course, they're also one step removed from fair, so it'd be a good idea to keep an eye on them to see which way they're tending to lean! If at all possible (without badly compromising the rest that your needs), start getting up an hour earlier. Even 30 minutes can make a great difference. In fact, by rising 30 minutes earlier each morning, you add 3-1/2 hours of potential productivity to your week. Just be sure it isn't spent pouring over poor email! Determine which hours of the day you are at your personal best. Use this time to get the most important things done. Get more organized. (Organization is one of the golden keys to life. I'm still working on finding mine.) Time spent looking for things is time wasted and time wasted can never be brought back. Remember when your mom said, "A place for everything and everything in its place."? Turns out Mom's a genius. Do things right the first time, then you won't have to go back and re-do them. That's one of the most maddening time wasters there is. One of my favorite quotes on the subject of time management is by Robert Eliot: "It's important to run not on the fast track, but on your track. Pretend you only have six months to live, and make three lists: the things you have to do, want to do, and neither have to do nor want to do. Then, for the rest of your life, forget everything on the third list." Said another way - Get those priorities straight!