It’s good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it’s good, too, to make sure that you haven’t lost the things that money can’t buy.

George Horace Lorimer

To be fully rounded as a person, you need to know the importance of time management. You and your quality of life requires a worldview that recognizes time as the one invaluable, indispensable, irreplaceable ingredient of a successful, happy, highly productive life. You need an attitude toward time as something more than the clock or the calendar.

Get Rid of all Your Time Wasters!

Time is your scarcest resource, you must use your intelligence to preserve it in every way possible, and to acquire more time whenever you can by eliminating all time wasters. Improving your time management skills will inevitably improve your quality of life. Whenever possible, you should trade money for time. The money is replaceable, but the time is not.

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Whenever you can, you should hire people to do tasks of lower value so that you can create more time for yourself, your family and your work.

If you aspire to earn $50,000 per year, which translates into about $25.00 per hour, you must never do work that does not pay $25.00 per hour or more. You should hire other people to do anything that they will do for less than $25.00 per hour. If you can hire someone for $5.00 or $6.00 per hour to mow your lawn or clean your house, you should pay the money willingly to free up your time for higher value activities.

Know the importance of time management and apply these same time management skills to your spouse. Many of the successful executives and entrepreneurs with a strong grasp of this concept are able to go home and change their spouse’s lifestyle. They encourage them to hire housekeepers, gardeners and personal assistants to do errands and go shopping. They “buy their freedom” so that they can enjoy a higher quality of life, and spend more time with the family and in personal pursuits. The payoff for both parties is often extraordinary.

Improve Your Time Management Skills

Keep track of how efficiently you use your time. The more you think about how you are spending your minutes and hours, the better and more precise you will become at time management. Because they do not monitor their time usage, most people are not even aware of the amount of time they waste each hour.

Get a wristwatch with an alarm that beeps every fifteen minutes. Each time the alarm sounds, stop and observe yourself. Look at what you are doing at that moment. If possible, keep a time log and make a note of what you are doing each time the alarm rings. Ask yourself regularly, “Is what I am doing right now the very best use of my time?”

All of life is the study of attention. The more attention you pay to the way you are using your time and your biggest time wasters, the more efficient and productive you are likely to be. The more aware you are of the fleeting nature of time, the better you will use it, while increasing your quality of life.

Spend Your Time Like Money

When you take the short view, you look upon every request for your time as taking away from the amount of time you have left on earth. Continually ask yourself, “How much of my life am I willing to donate or spend on this particular person, situation or activity.”

Your time is at least equal to your hourly rate. If your hourly rate is $25.00 and someone wants an hour of your time, that person is, in effect, asking you for a gift of $25.00. If someone asks you to donate your time to a particular cause or activity, you have to ask yourself, “How important is that cause or activity to me, and how much of my time and money am I willing to donate to it?”

If a person or activity is not important enough for you to open you wallet and peel off $20.00 bills to give to it, you must discipline yourself not to do it. Just say “No!”

Improve Your Quality of Life

Be selfish with your time in order to improve your quality of life. Remember, your time is your life, and this life is not a rehearsal for something else. Say “no” to requests for your time that don’t move you toward your own goals and personal aspirations. When you say “No,” people will often express a little disappointment, or even a try to make you feel guilty. Nonetheless, you should stick to your guns. Their shallow disapproval will only last for a few seconds, and then they will be off to someone else to ask them to donate their time or money. And you will be free and your quality of life will dramatically improve.

In developing a philosophy of time management, treat your time like money. Allocate your time at your hourly rate. Use this hourly rate as a measuring tool for everything you do.

Concentrate your efforts on high value tasks, on tasks that can pay you what you want to earn. If you want to earn $25.00 per hour, continually ask yourself, “Is what I am doing right now the sort of work that pays $25.00 per hour or more?” If it is not, discipline yourself to stop doing it. Discipline yourself to only do work that pays what you really want to earn.

Know the Importance of Time Management

In developing your philosophy of time management, continually remind yourself that you cannot manage time. You can only manage yourself. Time management is life management. Time management requires self-control, self-mastery, and self-discipline. Time management behaviors and disciplines are skill that you can learn through practice and repetition. Eventually, your ability to manage yourself and your life will become automatic and easy and you will improve your overall quality of life.

Time management is a lifestyle that must be practiced every hour, every day, all the days of your life. It is the one habit, the one discipline that is essential to everything else you want to achieve. With excellent time management skills and practices, there are no limits.

Thank you for reading this article about eliminating time wasters while improving the quality of life by improving your time management skills. Please share and comment below!

Earn More Money and More Time. Eliminate the Time Wasters! is a post from: Brian Tracy's Blog