In today’s fast paced world where everything needs to be done immediately, every person is just looking for a way to find more time in every day. And one of the first things you can do to create more time in your life is by prioritizing. Fit your targets and goals into three categories – A, B and C – in order of the importance. The most important task goes into the ‘A’ category, lesser important ones in ‘B’ and the rest in ‘C’. This alone will help you accomplish much more in your day and get you started on the road to effective time management.

Time management is no longer just a means to sell books for experts, but it is a need of the hour – to make more hours! It is a very simple process with four key elements that can be easily incorporated into your life:

1. Recognize the ‘Real’ Duration of Each Task

This is the first key to time management. You need to get a realistic estimate of the time that it takes you to finish any task that you perform everyday. And the only way to do this is to time yourself. For instance, look at the time when you wake up in the morning, and then again when you leave the house to go for work. Check your watch, before you start driving and then again when you reach your work place. The idea is to clock your actions and tasks so that you get a real idea about how long it takes you to get dressed or drive to work, cook a meal or dust the furniture. Make a list of these times and then plan your day according to your new realistic perspective on how long you take to complete chores.

2. Focus on your Target

One of the foremost reasons why people are unable to accomplish their “to-do” lists is because they get distracted very easily. For instance, you’ve set out to clean your wardrobe. In the course of doing so, you come across several outfits that were once really popular. You spend a lot of time reminiscing about the times you wore them and even take a few minutes to try some of them on. At the end of the day, you will discover that your old clothes are strewn all over the floor and your wardrobe hasn’t really been cleaned out. That is why it is extremely crucial to stay focused on your targets for the day. And this principle should be applied to everything that you do – whether at home or in the office. This will only help you in getting your tasks accomplished faster and more efficiently.

3. Utilize Spare Time

It should always be your endeavor to find ways to be productive with the few minutes here and there that you would normally waste. For instance, use commercial breaks between television soaps to do chores that only require 2-3 minutes. You’ll find that your work gets done much faster and you clean up a lot of messy areas in your home. Invest in a cordless phone so that when you talk to people, you are able to do other tasks alongside. Take your reading along when you have to go to the doctor - this way the waiting is reduced and you have also read up on those interesting books and articles. You could even write letters or balance your checkbooks. The point is to make efficient use of the small amounts of time you don’t even realize you have!

4. Create Efficiency in Completing Routine Tasks

Routine or mundane tasks like cleaning the garage or vacuuming the carpets or even yard work are generally very boring. But you ‘have to’ do them. So, what you need to do it devise ways and means to get this done as quickly as possible so that you spend little time doing the ‘have to’ chores and free up more time for the things you really ‘want to’ do. The point is to spend as little time as possible on those routine yet essential tasks in your life.

If you make these four elements a part of your day-to-day lives, you’ll realize that you have more time to yourself in the very same twenty-four hour day!