My trick to effective time management

I’m a busy lady, two children, one of which isn’t in full time school yet, numerous clubs and activites to get the children to, my Social Media business and all the usual house workey things like keeping an available stock of clean clothes and cooking proper meals for the family (yes my children do eat fishfingers, but not every night!), so I struggle as much as anyone with finding time to get things done.

The trick that I’ve tried to perfect over the years is to decide what my most important jobs are and then allocate some time to them daily, or as frequently as is necessary. For example, if I have a blog post to write, I’ll give myself half an hour of focused time for it. During that time, I won’t answer the phone or check Facebook or my emails. If I’d been attempting to multi-task, I just wouldn’t get it finished in that time. I also allocate some time to each of my clients on a daily basis, and as long as I’m strict with myself, I achieve what I set out to do.

Maybe I’m just not very good at multi-tasking? For me, it often means lots of unfinished jobs around the house, or files on my computer littered with WIP, that quite often never get completed. Maybe this means I’m in touch with my “masculine side”?

So…imagine my delight when I found this nifty on-line stopwatch  the other day?  Now I don’t even have to keep an eye on my watch as a buzzer will tell me when my time is up and it’s on to the next task! Such a simple thing! If you’re struggling with too much to do in too little time, why not give my idea a try?