Use your time wisely

Most people complain that they never have enough time to take action on their goals. All they can think about, after work, is to watch TV, relax, and sleep because they feel so tired. I was the same. I have never considered the importance of time before. I would just laze around, watch TV, lie on bed, hang out with friends, chat, surf the web, and play computer games (or online games) whenever I have free time. And one day, I thought about the things that I have achieved. To my surprise, I haven’t accomplished a lot and I was moving too slowly.

Undoubtedly, time is the most valuable asset one may possess. Once you lose your money, you can always get it back later. However, it will just never happen the same with your time. Once lost, it will never be reclaimed. Unfortunately, you can barely manage time, save time nor make time. You can only use your time wisely.

There are many advice on effective time consuming already. In this blog entry, I would like to summarize a few and add some that really work with me.

1. Choose your ultimate goals.
You may be wondering why goals first - because it will help. Trust me, you will hardly work any faster or any harder than you would usually do, regardless how hard you try. However, with an ultimate goal defined, you would have your approach optimize, you would be able to eliminate redundant activities or those that bring no values to you. It’s never a waste to put some time on goal setting and planning.

2. Be organized.
Try to break down the activities needed to achieve your goal with PRIORITIES. Review your plans every day or week to optimize the schedule. Let’s put everything under control. I suggest to daily schedule what to do when you are riding to workplace, and review what has been done on the way to come back home.

3. Learn to say ‘NO’. Cut your losses.
Chat and internet surfing, watching TV, and playing games are the topmost time-wasting activities. Believe me! These will not bring much values as you might have thought.

It is a good idea to enforce you yourself to only chat, check personal e-mail and surf the web on non-work stuffs at lunch time only, in no longer than 45 minutes per day. Spending longer hours on chatting and sending personal e-mails will not actually help you obtain any more information. Alternatively, don’t read every single pieces of news but focus on what is really useful for your goals, your job, and your life. Try RSS Feeds, it will also help.

Watching TV is also a time-killer giant. Don’t waste your time on movies as you cannot learn anything much compare with the time it takes. Use that amount of time to read self-improvement books is much better. In addition to this, Cinemax, HBO, StarMovies, etc. don’t really help you improve your English because it’s hard NOT to focus on the Vietnamese subtitles, try Bloomberg, Discovery Channel, and National Geographic instead. NEVER let the contemporary damned low quality Vietnamese movies ever bother you, simply because it isn’t worth your time.

Don’t play computer games or any other games that bring no help. Play the real-life game instead, you will find it an even much more interesting game.

4. Repeat the above steps.

Because most of us rarely find and take time to organize the way of doing things in our everyday life, we’re constantly overwhelmed with tasks and things to keep track of. This gives us the impression of being so impossibly busy all the time, that we can’t imagine doing something else on top of our daily routine. We feel lucky if we get to enjoy a weekend with our family, yet we never stop worrying about all these things waiting for us back at work.

Every single of us has equally 24 hours per day, neither more nor less. Find your own way to use time wisely and you will be surprised on the returns.