What do you do with your time?  Do you ever find yourself wishing you had more time? Maybe, you’ve complained that there wasn’t enough time in a day?

Any way you cut it each day consists of 24 hours That’s 1,440 minutes, or 86,400 seconds. How much of that time are you using effectively and how much of that time “goes to waste”?*

*I put “goes to waste” in quotations as this is subjective.  This can be associated negatively with certain activities, or lack of activities, however, some people value/don’t value this time differently.

OKAY… Now, let’s break it down.  Say you have great sleep hygiene and spend 8 hours of every night resting and recovering.  I wish this was always the case but some nights are better than others. After your nightly 8 hours you are left with 16 hours to carpe diem.

The first aspect of time management I want to iterate is priorities.  No matter who you are and what you do you need to be able to prioritize.  Priority #1 is yourself! If you do not give yourself time this will translate into lost time throughout the rest of your day and, from a morbid perspective, time lost later in life.  Self-reflection, journaling, physical activity, eating healthy, etc.  To put this into perspective, here is how I start out my day…

• 5:30AM – Wake Up, make bed, drink water, and have a still, calm moment.
• 5:45AM – Stretch/Yoga/ Physical Activity.  Blast some tunes!
• 7:00AM – Shower.
• 7:15AM – Coffee, self-reflection, and read. Outside on a bench overlooking the water preferably.
• 8:00AM – Plan of attack for the day. Set your intentions. Reply to emails/texts.
• 9:00AM – 11:00AM: Prospecting/business builder.

I am a believer that how you start your day truly matters. It sets you on a path for success. Start with completing one simple task.  Make your bed! It’s contagious and will create a momentum that will result in another task being completed, and another, and so on.

The most successful people in the world are able to manage their time in almost OCD fashion.  30-minute increments. 15-minute increments.  Some even manage their day down to every 5-minute increments or even bathroom breaks!  I’m not saying that is what you need to do but the more aware you are of how you are spending each minute of every day the more efficient you will be with your time.

Don’t get down on yourself either.  It takes time to instill new behaviours.  Be as consistent and persistent as possible but also know that you are human.  Live by the 80/20 rule so you don’t go insane.