Time is the best equalizer on earth. Whether you are old or young, rich or poor, all of us get the exact same 86,400 seconds a day. But it is how we organize and utilize our time that sets us apart from one another. Whichever time management system works best for you, choose one and stick with it. Life is too short to waste time. To increase the success rate of your goal , it needs to be time bound with strong accountability for each step in other to achieve the outcome.

Also you are most effective when you incorporate your goal into your time management , if you goal becomes goal oriented , then you will find yourself accomplishing much more in the course of day .

Tips on using time as powerful resources :

Goal Setting:

In other to use time to your advantage set a time bound goal , this is because when you set smart goals with defined outcome for yourself, you are driven by those goals and the clock becomes an instrument you use to ensure that you meet your deadlines. Time bound goal motivate you to accomplish more in a day, because you develop more will power to eliminate the things that waste your time and you stop  watching the clock or running to catch up with time. Use the SMART method to make your goals smart in other to use time as a resources .

The SMART method of Goal Setting

The SMART method is an outstanding way to measure and prioritize goals so that they can become a regular part of time management routine.

• “S”  stands for choosing Specific goals. Outline precisely what you want your goals to be, and how you propose to reach them. 
• “M”  stands for  Measurable . This helps to remind you to make your goals measurable. Give your goals  a time limit and create  a system that will allow you to know when the goal is achieved. This is essential to making your goals a part of time management. 
• “A” stands for Attainable. This reminds us to make sure our goals are attainable.  It helps us to inform us when to break goals down into smaller goals , to make it easily achievable .
• “R” stands for Realistic . This reminds us to check if  our goals are realistic. Set goals that you are likely able to achieve with a realistic amount of dedication.
•  “T” stands for Time. This reminds us to ensure that our goals are Time bound to be achieved within a time frame. Setting a deadline to complete your goals. This will help to keep you on track to complete the next goal.

Habit Tracking

It is important to track your time for a couple of  weeks to help you become aware of what is taking your time, assess how you spend your time at work for about two to three weeks. Ask yourself each of the following questions when you review the results: 

• What are you doing? 
• Where is the majority of your time being spent? 
• What did you accomplish? 
• Was any of this time wasted? 
• Was your time well spent? 
• Did the activities on which you spent your time help you get closer to achieving your goals?

At the end of the two to three weeks, tally up all the numbers and scrutinize what you have accomplished as a result. This way, you will have a baseline on which to base your success as you progress with your efforts to reach your goal. Also, identify the time wasting activities and work out how to switch it for more productive activities. Analyse the time spent on each activities, analyse the result from each activities towards your goal, think of how to maximise your time on activities to yield best result for your goals , how to balance other activities in your life or for people in your life , to create a good sync and life integration.

Habit  tracking is such a vital tool to help with time management to turn time into a valuable resources to set realistic deadlines, identify distraction and avoid distractions. The best way to  identify and avoid distraction is by prioritizing tasks using the quadrant time-management system (also known as a Time Management Matrix). This graph splits activities into four quadrants based on urgency and importance; either urgent, important, both, or neither. 

• Important and urgent: These tasks have important deadlines with high urgency—complete these right away.
• Important but not urgent: These items are important but do not necessarily need immediate attention. They should involve some long-term development strategizing. For highly effective time management, spend most of your time in this quadrant.
• Urgent but not important: These tasks are urgent but not important. Minimize, delegate, or eliminate these as they do not necessarily contribute to your overall goals.
• Urgent and unimportant: These activities hold little if any value. These should be eliminated as much as possible if you want to stay on track.

Time blocking

Time blocking is the practice of planning out every moment of your day in advance and dedicating specific time “blocks” for certain tasks and responsibilities.

The simple reason why time blocking works is that it’s designed for focusand guard against distractions.

The human brain needs guardrails at work. Otherwise, we fall into what’s known as Parkinson’s Law:

“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”

Our biorhythms often determine our ability to function well while doing a specific task. Some people do their best work in the early morning, while others function better in the afternoon.  Thanks to the internet  and Smartphone, so many of things are grabbing our attention due to the infinite wealth of information, resources and connections at our fingertips . But we must get into the habit of protecting out time and only utilising it intentionally. For example, our mobile phones apps can be very useful or distracting depending on what you use it for. So ,ask yourself a simple question; do i use my phone as a tool to advance my goals or my day and make money or manage my time effectively , or is my phone using me and enabling me to waste my time ? Every time you catch yourself ridiculously scrolling through your social media news feed, remind yourself that  your attention is being sold to the social media owners.

See below how to time block

1. Decide what you care about most

Decide on the goal you want to achieve and the activities that is required to fulfil in other to achieve it , take into consideration your daily useful routine too.

For example, you want more time with your kids while keeping a reasonable schedule or want to generate work that is more meaningful and impactful? Then put your activities into priority order.

2. Create a to-do list

Then write out your daily to-do list, including both personal and work tasks. Schedule mandatory tasks first. Any high-priority task should be at the top of your to-do list. Group items into the appropriate time block, such as “meetings,” “email,” “cooking time ,”  “children time ” and any other activity in you list.

3. Practice task batching 

This is when you do a bunch of similar tasks at once. For example, you can use task batching for something as simple as cooking , cleaning the kitchen, freezing batch of food. 

A good way might be to clean along as you are cooking all the sauce and soup , then there is no pile of washing up of plates and pots. Then share the soup and sauce in the bowls, allow all to cool down and batch freeze at once.  Task batching, help you to break larger task down and do each smaller task separately.

If you’re struggling with creating your own time blocking plan, you could try using a calendar or planner specifically for time blocking.

According to Forbes , 85% of the world’s population experiences low self-esteem. How does that affect  successful goal achievement ? well, you need confidence in yourself  and in your goals to increase the chances of achieving your goals. Low o poor self esteem reduces confidence because self esteem is  the perception you hold about yourself, how you feel about yourself as an individual, the beliefs you have about yourself with regards to what you can achieve and your ability to deal with the daily pressures of life.

Low or poor self esteem usually stops people from setting and achieving goals and having a fulfilling life because it kills motivation and makes you believe that you don’t have what it takes to achieve great things and fulfil your dreams.

Confidence boosting tips

1) Leverage on opportunities :

Talk to a trusted person , to share your fears, worries , in other to get a different perspective on whatever is bothering or discouraging you from achieving your goals . When you share your goals with a friend , family or a coach , it makes it easier to achieve your goal because your goal because of accountability ;

who are your support systems ? Write down a list of 3 people who can hold you accountable to achieve your goals ?

2)  focus on your strength :

Make sure your goals are in alignment with your strength, collaborate with others who compliment your skills or contract the services of others who compliment your strength in order to cover the gap. This will help you focus on using your strength to effectively work on your goal with confidence .

Write down 3 of your strength that makes you stand out ?

3). Reflect on  your past successes:

Reflection on your past success helps to motivate and boost your  confidence level . It reminds you that if you were able to succeed before, then you  will be able to succeed again. Also writing down the step you took to succeed before , can help you to elicit your success model or style . Your success model can be repeated to help you achieve more goals .

 Reflect on your past successes and write down how each of your previous success made you feel.

4) Practise affirmation and gratitude

Writing down personalise affirmation and reading out daily to yourself helps to increase you confidence and encouragement to achieve your goal . Gratitude is another that helps to boost confidence  because it helps you to intentionally notice and appreciate the good things around you. It may sounds simple, but feeling gratitude and expressing it to others can have enormous benefits on your self esteem boost . 

Gratitude can also help change the way you judge yourself and people who feel more gratitude are less likely to compare themselves to other people , instead they think more in line of collaboration.

Look around you and write 10 things you are grateful today

5) Invest in personal development

Identify skills or the part of your life  that needs improvement  in other for you to gain confidence . For example if learning how to cook is one of your goal, then it will be great to take cooking classes to help you learn cooking skills and then endeavour to practise often in other to develop your cooking skills

6) Filter your thoughts

Think about what you are thinking about yourself. when you get into the habit of filtering your thoughts, address the feelings your thought brings, to help you take the lessons and move on to achieve your goal. Suppressing negative thoughts do not sometimes make it go away, so question the negative thought, extract the feedback and discard the thought with better ones .

For example if your confidence level was knocked by past experience of maybe not getting a desired job promotion, then try and evaluate your interview feedback, create a strategy on how to show up better for another interview . Practise better interview skills with a trusted  person to boost your confidence