According to Stephanie Culp author of You Can Find More Time for Yourself Every Day many people resisit keeping a time log, even though two weeks’ worth of it invariably highlights wasted time that could easily be turned into saved time. She advises if you really want to find more time for yourself,keep your eyes peeled for time wasters as you go along.

Stephanie says never lose sight of what your’re worth per hour. While you’re filling your time log with entries like, “Stopped at the cleaners and the drug store – 1 hour,” remember what that hour cost you. You could easily use a dry cleaning service that delivers and order prescriptions online to be delivered.

If you had used a service that delivered and ordered your medicine online, you’d have had one hour for yourself. If your tendency is to resist hiring people to help you out, ask yourself if how spending your time make sense and cents.

For example, consider if it is worth say the $20 or $30 it would cost you to have the yard work done by someone else so you could have a Saturday all to yourself or spend time with your kids?

Is it worth it to spend $10.00 a week to drop all the shirts off at the professional launderers, or would I rather spend three hours each week doing them myself? Is my time really worth only $3.33 per hour? For $40.00 per month, you can have a whole day back for yourself.

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I have been reading a book called You Can Find More Time for Yourself Every Day by Stephanie Culp. She explains that the first thing you need to do when trying to manage your time is to find the value of your time. According to Ms. Culp, “Knowing the value of your time can be a key tool and a deciding factor in how to prioritize the use of the time available.”

She suggests taking a pencil and figuring out what your time is worth. Determine your hourly dollar value based on your gross salary and the number of hours you work. Then the next time you are tempted to fritter away an hour fussing with the batteries on the pencil sharpener or some other such nonsense, stop and think about how much that time is worth. If your not spending your time doing a task that is at least equal to the dollar value of your hourly time, it’s probably a task you shouldn’t be doing at all.

And the next time you find yourself procrastinating or wasting time in some other way, be honest with yourself. Your time is worth money – whether you are wasting that time or making good use of it.

Once you have figured out what your time is worth, you need to take a look at how you’re spending it. The most common way to do this is to keep a time log for a week or two. Essentially, this involves writing down just about everything you do, noting how much time you spent doing any one thing.

If you spend fifteen minutes on the phone with your mother, write it down. If you spend twenty minutes daydreaming, write it down. If you spend one hour in the sales meeting, note that, and if you spend thirty minutes preparing the sales figures for the boss write that down as well.

Stephanie says after keeping a time log for a couple of weeks, it becomes glaringly apparent that you are wasting time in several different ways. You may also see a pattern where other people are wasting your time (which you allow), and – if you’re honest – you;ll even see where you have been guilty of wasting others’ time.

We will posting more time management tips from You Can Find More Time for Yourself Every Day by Stephanie Culp so check back or subscribe to our RSS feed. In the meantime if you need more help staying organized see our related post Reduce Paperwork

importance of time management,time management tools,why is time management important, time savers,time management advice,effective time management,time management strategies

Technorati Tags: importance of time management, time management tools, why is time management important, time savers, time management advice, effective time management, time management strategies