Master your time and master your life

“Time equals life, therefore,
waste your time and waste your life,
or master your time and master your life.”

~ Alan Lakein

Wouldn’t it be great if there was an extra hour in the day, or an extra day in the week? Think of everything you could achieve! What would you do with it? How would you maximise it?

The thing about time is it’s always coming at you. You can’t catch it, stop it, slow it down or bring it back. Blink and you miss it. It’s here, then it’s gone.

The only thing we can do is learn how to master time; for when time is used correctly, it is the key to happiness, growth and prosperity.

Analyse your time
The first step in mastering your time is to analyse where it is going.

Try out our Time Log for one week – you may be surprised to see where your time goes! Use it to make notes throughout the day of what you are doing and how long it takes you. Write down every task, activity, break and interruption to understand how much of your time is spent on each, then ask yourself:

• Are the things you spend the most time on priorities in your life/job? If not, what are you going to change to give the most important tasks the valuable time they require?
  
• What is wasting more of your time than you expected? How are you going to stop this from happening?

Know the value of your time
Most business owners know their salary, but few know their hourly rate. If you don’t know yours, I urge you to work it out and be continually mindful of it. If you break down your day and apply your hourly rate to everything you do, you will quickly see the personal cost of wasting time.

As an example, a business owner earning £80,000 per annum who spends 2 hours a day completing tasks that could be delegated to others costs their company £82 per day, £410 per week, £1,640 per month and £19,680 per year!

If that isn’t enough to convince you of the benefits of knowing the value of your time, consider this… every 10 minutes you waste in your day equates to one wasted week per year. Every 20 minutes you waste in your day equates to two wasted weeks per year. By the time you evaluate wasted hours you’ll be kicking yourself for being so lavish with such a fleeting commodity.

Now for the good news! The flip side of understanding how much time you are wasting is that you have the power to stop yourself from wasting more.

Make more time
By turning the 10 minutes of wasted time into 10 minutes of productive time a day, you can create an extra week in your year. Remember those 20 wasted minutes? They can become two extra weeks of productivity! It doesn’t take a magician to make this happen; simple changes often bring satisfying results. For starters:

• Identify the most important job you hate doing – and make sure you do it first
  
• Create a default diary and stick to it
  
• Switch off your phone/emails/distractions when you need time to concentrate
  
• Plan for interruptions – make time for the unexpected
  
• Invest your time, don’t spend it
  
• Delegate tasks to your team
  
• Don’t stress the small stuff
  
• Don’t finish today until you have planned tomorrow

Once you have mastered your time, you can master your life. Spend more time with friends and family, read more books, enjoy the fruits of your labour… whatever it is that you’ve been wishing for more time to do – now is the time to do it!