Time.
Are you struggling for time?
Looking for tips on time management?
Are you making time for priorities?
Or are you wasting time?
Well itโs time to stop for a second.
Life is hectic. If youโre not careful, youโll find yourself so stretched that youโre wasting time on unimportant things and not concentrating on your priorities.
You need to take action now.ย
John Lennon once said โLife is what happens when youโre busy making other plans.โ Don't let that happen to you.
Iโve put together a guide on how to manage your time more effectively and get more from your life.
Without further ado, let's get to my 10 Time Management Tips that actually work.
#1. Make Time To Think
This is one of my most important time management tips. Make time to think. Don't findย time to think.
Making time is a priority.
Youโve got to know what you want from your life. Where are you going? What is your purpose? So many people go through life like zombies – sleepwalking from day to day and not thinking about what they want to get out of life.

So how do you do make time?
Wake up early. I get up at 5am. This time is for me and me only; I can read, I can work on self development and I can go to the gym and exercise. I dedicate this to myself. Most people are still asleep at 5am so itโs the perfect time to work without distraction.
Iโve just written an article on this very subject – How to Wake Up at 5am Daily.
#2. Time Management – Understand You Canโt Have It All
You canโt do everything so donโt even try. Itโs just not possible. Attempting to do so will mean youโll spread your time so thinly that you wonโt be able to move forward in a meaningful way.
My advice to you is to take the path of the Essentialist. Spend a little more time looking the bigger picture and decide what do you really want. What are your priorities? You need to focus on them. Thereโs a great book by Cal Newport called โDeep Work – Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted Worldโ.
You should also check out the book โessentialism – The Disciplined Pursuit of Lessโ by Greg McKeown. If you don't have the time to read, you can listen on the commute to work.
#3. Be Honest – What's Important To You?
Let me be straight: most of you are lying to yourselves. Iโm going to ask you: what do you not have time for? If you are looking for time management tips, you need to be honest with yourself.
โI donโt have time to play with my kidsโ
โI donโt have time to have coffee with my wife in the morningโ.
โI donโt have time to socialize with my friendsโ
By saying you donโt have time, youโre saying itโs not important to you or that itโs not a priority for you.

Perhaps youโre spending all your time at the office. Everyoneโs circumstances are different but I can tell you that youโre not spending time on whatโs important in your life.
You may have to reevaluate and cut back your hours. Using the work example, ask yourself what are you working for? You are probably working in order to have a good quality of life. And a good quality relationship with that person in your life and those around you. How can you do that if you donโt have time for them?
#4. Cut Out The Fat
There are a lot of non essential things in our lives. Conduct an audit on how you spend your time. Measure your time and you will be amazed at how much time you are wasting. Are you wasting your time watching TV? Or commuting to work? You need to identify these areas that are sucking your life away.
#5. Set Up A Routine
Create a morning routine, a day routine and an evening routine. It may sound robotic but have a series of steps and processes you follow.
Once you have a process, you can improve upon that process. If you have no routine and do things hap-hazardly, you canโt improve them. This is a key concept if you want to figure out how you can improve things.
For example, if youโre groggy when you wake up, you might need to improve your evening routine. For example, cut out Social Media before bed. Or eat earlier.
Or simply go to bed earlier.
#6. Just Get Started!
Stop procrastinating and take action! You must be strict with yourself and set yourself deadlines.
In our personal lives, a lot of things donโt have deadlines so we procrastinate and we โdilly dallyโ and donโt get things done. Without deadlines, we canโt work to anything so thereโs no urgency.

If you have an โafternoon meetingโ, chances are youโll spend a lot of the time not focusing on the important topics. If you know your meeting is 30 minutes long, youโll make sure you get what you need to covered in this time.
You can use this strategy in conversation too. If you are speaking with someone and you're pushed for time, you can explain that you only have 5 minutes. Youโve then set the expectation and youโll get to the point quicker.
#7. Get An Accountability Partner
Donโt rely solely on yourself.
I find that someone holding you accountable is an incredibly powerful technique for being productive – much more powerful than any other app out there. Iโve got a Personal Trainer who meets me at the gym every morning. I have paid in advance, meaning I will lose my money if I donโt show up. (And he will call me if I don't show up.!) I donโt want to let him down or waste my money and this means I am on time, every time.
It can be anyone but youโll be surprised at how much more you get done if youโre answering to someone. As time management tips go, this one is very effective.
#8. Schedule Everything
Schedule your personal AND professional events. I was very good at scheduling my professional life – I was on time for meetings I had scheduled but I found that I was turning up late to events in my personal life, like showing up late to dinner with my wife.

I wasnโt making her important enough in my life. So I started scheduling dinner, bed time, lunch. And I started treating them with the same importance as my professional life. Weโre all human so there are times when I donโt stick to this schedule but I will see reminders and notifications in my calendar and this helps keep me on track.
When itโs in my scheduler, I generally find it gets done.
#9. Stop Giving Bad Time Estimates
One of my top time management tips is this – stop giving bad time estimates! If you think it takes you 25 minutes to get to work, this is your best case scenario.
You might find this takes you 30 / 35 / 40 minutes and thatโs where the problem happens if you run into traffic. You might justify this as โnot my fault – I didnโt expect trafficโ. False. You messed up your timing. You knew there could be traffic so why didnโt you plan accordingly?
As human beings, we always try and go for the best time estimates so you need to re evaluate these things.
So there we have it, gentlemen. My 10 Time Management Tips that actually work.
Now you know how to effectively manage the time you have, why not check out my article on 10 Timeless Style Habits?
Click Here To Watch The Video โ 10 Time Management Tips That Actually Work!
Click Here To Watch The Video โ 10 Time Management Tips That Actually Work!