Time is perhaps the most important resource, and it is certainly a unique one in that once it’s used you can never get it back, and we never know exactly how much we have left. However, it seems that a lot of us take this precious commodity for granted.

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There are many ways to make the best of your time – stop or lessen how much you procrastinate, schedule better, set goals and increase your productivity. Here I share some tips that I found to be quite useful in increasing my productivity.

Increases your productivity

So, what exactly is productivity? Productivity is that perfect balance between effectiveness and efficiency. Here is better productivity in three simple steps:

1. Be effective: this means being able to accomplish a purpose. So what’s your purpose? A good question to ask yourself is – “Why am I doing this?” Are you happy with answer you get? If not then should you really be doing this right now? Sure you might watch TV to relax, but do you really need to watch TV for two hours to accomplish that?

I personally believe that having an understanding of why we do what we do is quite important. In fact it’s a bit of an obsession for me, because I believe that if I understand that then I will have a better understanding of why we choose one task over another.

2. Invest your time better: Knowing where a lot of your time is being drained, ask yourself what you could be doing to better utilize your time? Do it.

3. Be efficient: You should know be doing something that best utilises your time, now all we have to do is get is done faster and better. I talk about this in more detail below.

More on effectiveness

Most importantly figure out what is important to you and what is not, and the best tool I can suggest for this something called the time management matrix. In order to manage your time well stay mostly in boxes I and II and completely avoid boxes III and IV. Try this for a week and you will see the difference for yourself.

Further efficiency

Here are some tips on achieving greater efficiency:

• Eliminate clutter and distraction: the more clutter there is the more complex the task will seem (as you’ll have to juggle more things around just to get started on your task). Additionally clutter adds a degree of subconscious stress.

If you need more proof:According to the Wall Street Journal (March, 1997) the average U.S. executive wastes 6 weeks per year searching for misplaced information from messy desks and files. That equals 5 hours per week or one hour per day. At $60,000/year in salaries, that is nearly $8,000/year in wasted time on the job.

• Do things smarter: this means getting things done with the least amount of effort but yielding the greatest rewards.
• Use all the tools available: try and automate your tasks as much as possible, by using technology and any other methods you can
• Outsource: There are some things that just have to be done, but you hate doing (I can think of at least a few). Why not pass them on to someone else who actually loves doing it

The question that some ask is why bother being productive? Ultimately, being productive means that we are able to do more of what we really love, more often.

How do you manage your time? Do you have any additional tips, let us know in the comments.

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