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Are you always feeling as though there is not enough time to accomplish everything that needs to get done? Do you find yourself always running late? Perhaps your time management skills are lacking. When this occurs, chaos ensues and that leads to a stressful life. This article will help you manage your life better.

If you seem to always be behind schedule, be aware of your deadlines. You fall behind on your other tasks if you try to cram a certain task before a deadline. But if you make deliberate progress everyday for tasks with a deadline, you’ll do better work and feel more relaxed.

Working in advance is a great idea for time management. Write an agenda for the day ahead. Preparing the next day’s list is the best thing you can do at the end of each day. With your activities planned, you’ll feel that it is easy to dive right in to your tasks.

Use your time more wisely. Estimate how long it will take to complete each task, and establish a firm schedule. This gives you control over your life. If you find yourself with some unexpected time on your hands, use it on yourself or to get caught up on other things.

When creating a schedule for each day, do not forget to schedule in time for any interruptions that may occur. Things happen. If you don’t allocate time for little things that crop up during the day, you will get off schedule very quickly. You won’t lose track of what you’re doing if you learn to expect the interruptions.

If you are looking to manage time effectively, take full advantage of a calendar. Many choose printed calendars for the convenience of marking it up and carrying it with them. An electronic calendar may better suit you though. No matter which you prefer, use a calendar to help you manage your time.

Think about how you’re spending your time when you find yourself running out of it. Be sure to spend it wisely. Don’t listen to voice mail or return emails unless you’ve assigned yourself the time to do so. Otherwise, you reduce the time you have for the allotted tasks on your list.

When you awake everyday, spend some time in planning your day. Write down your tasks for day along with the estimate completion time. This will make your use of time more efficient.

Deadlines can help you to stick to your schedule. When you realize too late that a deadline is approaching, other tasks get put on the sideline, putting you further behind. If, however, you keep a watchful eye on your deadlines, that will not happen.

If you are working on a project, consider closing your office door. You can avoid interruptions this way. Closing the door will give you privacy in an instant. People are aware that you need to find your focus, so you can finish things on time.

Unless you really have to do so, it’s not good to answer the phone, instant messages, or texts while you’re busy with other things. It’s sometimes hard to return to work after interruptions. You can always return messages and calls when your task is complete.

Sometimes you need to step back and take a look at your day to understand why you aren’t getting enough done. If you are not focusing when you should be or following through to the end, ask yourself why. This is the first step in improving your use of time.

Stay on task to make your life better. Avoid distraction by tasks that come up while working on one already. There are some that try prioritizing your day by giving you more work while you are already working. Resist this hijacking of your time. Finish one task before taking on another.

Take a course in time management. This will give you tons of ideas on how to maintain your schedule. Does your company offer you classes like these? If time management classes are not provided at your workplace, see if a local community college offers them.

If you truly struggle with time management, plan things out in advance. It doesn’t matter whether your scribble down a quick to-do list or spend an hour carefully laying out exactly what you’ll do; any amount of groundwork will be extremely helpful. Doing this gives you some peace of mind and allows you to be better prepared to handle the pressures that you are bound to face the next day.

Keep a diary to manage your time better. For several days, jot down everything you’ve done and the amount of time spent doing it all. Look at your times and activities to see if there is any way to improve on them.

Schedule each day with the most important tasks listed first. In this way, your day will be more organized. Identify those tasks that are most important to complete for the day. Those tasks should take priority over others. Eventually you’ll get to the things that aren’t so important.

Prioritize the tasks in your day. Some people spend too much time on unimportant projects. When you set priorities, you’ll be certain that your energy is spend on the things that you find are most important. Create a list (in order of priority) of all the things you need to do.

Make sure your space is organized if you find yourself always running out of time. If you just spend a few minutes each time looking for something, and you do this everyday, you can lose hours over a week! Keep everything that is used on a daily basis organized and do not move it. This can save time and stress.

Break up your list of items to get done into four parts. The two columns should be labeled important and unimportant. The rows should be “urgent” and “non-urgent”. Don’t waste more than a tenth of your time acting on the not important/not urgent stuff. This will help keep your day focused on what is important. Leave time for the items which aren’t as urgent to ensure they get done, too.

When time management is getting hard, consider how you use your time. Use it wisely. Make time for checking emails and voicemails. If you look at them throughout the day, you are going to take up time you’ve allocated for another task.

Consider the big picture and what you would like to accomplish in life. Some say that if you really want to do something, you’ll find the time to do it. Cut out tasks that aren’t absolutely necessary and then concentrate on the essential ones. Your quality of life will improve if you set aside time for things you enjoy.

Add some more time to your expectation for completing hard tasks. You can lose a lot of time on big tasks if you haven’t prepared for eventualities. These problems may delay the process and change the completion time you had scheduled. Give yourself some buffer room.

Say no when you need to. People often get stressed because they don’t know when to say no. If that starts to happen to you, examine your current schedule. Can you delegate anything to someone else? If so, enlist the help of family and friends.

Quality of life can be greatly improved if you learn to properly manage your time. It can reduce any stress that you have because you can use your time to get things done that are important to you. Although it takes time to learn the necessary skills, once you learn them, you will be able to enjoy your life much better.