No one believes they have enough time for anything - which is why so many of us haven't reached all of our goals yet. But the truth is that everyone has the same amount of time in each day. It's the way we choose to spend our time that determines how much we get done and how accomplished we feel at the end of our days. Instead of blaming your growing To Do list on the lack of time you have, maybe it's time to learn better ways to spend your time.



Find Out Where You're Wasting

Often, we don't even realize when we are wasting time. So, to see where you might be able to make better use of your time, you need to start keeping track of what you do every day, at every hour. Simply write down what you are doing every hour for a few days. This will give you a good idea of what you are doing with your time - and it will almost certainly expose time wasters that you weren't even aware of. You might also want to create a grid for the hours of the day to give you a clear outline of the way you spend your time.

How to Change Your Time Spending

When you have a few days laid out in front of you, highlight the times when you felt like you could have done something more productive. Try adding in new things that you want to get done. Or, you might want to look at the lengths of time you devote to things and begin to scale these commitments back. For example, if you attend a book club once a week for three hours, but you only talk about the book for one of these hours, it might be a better use of your time to schedule that time to something else.

When It Seems Like Everything if Fine

If you're looking over the time diary you kept, you might notice that all of your time is filled with things that need to be done. When this is the case, you will need to find out ways to shift around responsibilities and delegate some of them to others in order to free up some time for your dreams. Another consideration is to look at the longer blocks of time to see how you can cut those down. Perhaps you can work through your lunch hour at work in order to leave an hour earlier each day, for example.

Time is mutable in relation to how you use it. While you are accepting things to put into your calendar, you will want to ask yourself if you will be happy spending your time doing that certain thing. If not, don't accept the invitation. And in the meantime, make sure that you are making the most of your time by keeping a To Do list with you that you can check off when some tasks take less time than you thought they would.