Time management is basically a goals and integrity issue. Do you ever find yourself going off on wild goose chases, reacting to the daily fires rather than proactively planning your day, and spending hours on activities that no one pays you to do? When you make these mistakes they are costing you precious time and keeping you from getting the results you want. You don’t get side tracked because you want to waste a lot of time and energy and increase your level of frustration and tension. You do it because you don’t have a clear direction for yourself for where you’re going and what you want to accomplish. You probably have a ball park idea, but it isn’t specific enough for you to actually know what you should be doing when.

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.

But when you don’t hold yourself accountable for actually taking the actions you’re out of integrity with yourself. The more frequently you do this the harder it is to maintain integrity and get things done. Because even while you’re planning to take action your thoughts are on the fact that you didn’t do it when you said you would before, so you probably won’t do it now.

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.

By: Cheryl A. Clausen..

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Author: Cheryl Clausen can help you get unstuck. To find Time Management Tips get her free ecourse. Improve your Time Management Skills, look here.

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 2nd, 2007 at 5:43 am and is filed under Time Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.