Effective Time Management

This video by WellCast will help you learn how to plan your day with the RAC method (Record, Analyse, and Change).

Watch it now here.

And here are three easy steps for effective time management.

Step 1: Record

First, you need to learn to record your actions. When you wake up tomorrow, note the time in your day planner. As the day progresses, write down everything that you do. Even the small things like getting dressed or drinking your coffee. Write down how much time you spend on each action. Keep this up from the time you wake up until you go to sleep.

Step 2: Analyse

Then, at the end of the day, highlight all the timeslots where you spent time unproductively. Pick five big time wasters in your day and be honest with yourself. You may have spent two hours on social networks or half an hour just staring absent-mindedly at something. At the end, add up all the unproductive time and see how much of your day you have wasted on unproductive activities.

Step 3: Change

Use these three ways to change your time-wasting habits and get back your productive hours:

• Prioritise

Assign yourself a maximum of five tasks every day. Rank them in order of importance.

• Declutter

Ordering your workspace will not only contribute to your health, but also to your fluent workflow.

• Schedule

If you’re trying to multitask – stop! This will actually stress you out and delay you more. Instead, create blocks of time for individual activities and set start and stop points for each of them. This way, your day is clearly segmented.

Try to spend a week using these steps to reduce time wasting and see how they could be helpful to improve productivity.