How to Be Ruthless with Time

Have you ever sat down and created this “amazing” time management plan and still failed to reach your goals.  Yeah me too!! I’ve found the reason why both you and I do this is because we’re too flexible and easy on ourselves and others when it comes to the schedule. As much as I wish, time is not limitless. You can’t swing by Target get more. You can’t work harder to get more of it; it’s a finite resource that cannot be increased or replaced.

When you realize that time is finite and that there really might not be some future distant tomorrow, you might start being more ruthless with the time you’ve got. Follow these tips to make time management so much easier.

🔶 Just Say No The biggest factor in being ruthless with your time is learning to say no. No is a complete sentence is the best lesson I’ve ever learned. It freed me from doing so much shit I hated! If you really do not want to do something, you must say no. There is no sin in saying no. The only reason you feel guilty about the word is that your mother taught you saying no was wrong. It’s time to realize that you are a grown ass women and you can now say no.

🔶Get Up on Time  This is a hard one for many but it doesn’t have to be hard as you think. Trust me I have an elaborate snooze squeeze and always need to factor in getting in at least one cup of coffee.

I work from home most days and it’s really easy to roll over cause my boss (me isn’t going to dock me for being late). Set a time that will you will get up each and every day. I work out most mornings so I’m up and out most days by [5:30]. No.. I don’t do this on weekend. I’m lucky if I can sleep until 8am on weekends.

🔶Try to Be Early  This one is such a challenge for me. In my professional life, I can be on time, but in my personal life I’m always trying to push the envelope.

When I push the envelope and there is traffic I stress out. I’m been really work to change this in my life. I’m always looking for ways to eliminate unnecessary urgency from my life, which in turn causes stress and can cause problems with time management. This way if something does happen out of the ordinary, I will still have time to meet a deadline and be on time.

🔶Turn Off Technology Anyone else feel me. I’ve made my mission to try off my phone at 9:30pm. I’ve found myself endless scrolling and then boom it’s 11pm.  Trust me I know how important your phone is, my phone is my businesses’ life blood. But seriously,the one very thing that is supposed to make our time more productive can have the opposite effect too. Schedule your tech time. Turn them off. You’ll gain so much more time. That includes your Netflixing and chillin’, too.

🔶 Understand Your Internal Clock We all have our own internal time clock. it’s important not to fight against that and be aware of what it is. Some people are early risers and some people are night owls and others are in between. It’s important for you to determine for yourself what your own internal clock is and then work with it.

🔶 Make Shorter To Lists I was the queen of the long to do list. Each and everyday I felt like I wasn’t accomplishing a damn thing. Then a mentor of mine shared with me that I should narrow my to do list down to 3 things. Once I get those 3 things done I could decide if I wanted to do more or be done for the day.

🔶 Calendar Each week I set my schedule for workouts, hours I will work on a particular project and when I will have down time. By doing this it keeps me from blowing myself off.  It also helps me stay on task and makes it much easier to say no to things that don’t fit into the proper bucket

Finally, don’t be too hard on yourself in terms of the hours you schedule yourself to work. Yes, be ruthless about the schedule, but also schedule in fun time. We aren’t designed to work 20 hours a day. Go ahead, schedule 8 to 10 hours a day of work. But, in between, schedule in breaks. Time with friends, family and spouses during any given work day is important too. Also, remember to schedule in breaks like weekends and vacations. If you do that, it’ll be so much easier to be ruthless with time and stick to your schedule normally.

Which one these tips do you think you can start to use immediately’