Life Balance – Take Time to List

One of the most important things that you can commit to memory is the value of your time. Your time is the most important asset you have, and it is the only asset you can not get back. If you are self-employed you have more of a sense for the value of your time but if you are a paid employee you may not value your time as much. Either way you need to know what the true value of your time is so when trivial items arise you can manage them more effectively thereby not spending your important time on them.

First, you must commit today to know the value of your time. You can write it out to help remember it or just commit it to memory but commit today to know its value so you can take control of your time usage.

Now that you have committed, make a list of everything you need to do. I use a flip notebook and Evernote but any notebook and online note system will do. This includes household items, business items, family items, social items, and any other items that I do not have here. This process may take several hours, which is okay.

Once you  finish, for now, you can see what you need to do. If your list is like my first one it looks enormous, but don’t worry about that, it has taken you years to procrastinate all of this on to the list so it may take two to three months to get rid of the majority. I guarantee you; now that you have your master list, items will get done faster than you think because with a list you can prioritize. For example, you are reading this article because me writing it is the most important thing on my list to do now.

Go through and decide what is important and you can use an; a, b, c, or 1, 2, 3 it does not matter just get them in some order. If you use a day-planner great if you are like me and do not great, this method is useful to either type. If you use a day-planner then you can put your most important item at the top of the planner to start first thing in the morning. If you do not use a planner then you will make a list of things to do tomorrow and put them in the order they need to be done. Your first project is the most important. Work on it and only it until it is completed or to a point where you can go no further with it. Then you will move on to item number 2 and so forth. What is not done today gets moved to tomorrow and so on.

Two things you need to realize are; first, the list does not stop growing. As new items come up they go on the list. Second, don’t stop. If you just keep going in a positive direction you will make progress. I know everyone gets off track but get back on when you do get off and keep moving forward.