The Ultimate Time Management Strategy

If you’re like most people, you probably have a pretty busy life. You also probably have a pretty long to-do list. A to-do list that no matter how much you get accomplished on it, it always seems to get bigger and longer. You may even feel like you’re behind the eight ball all the time, even overwhelmed. So life may seem like it’s totally overwhelming at times, and you may feel like you’re never going to get ahead.

This is pretty typical with people who are trying to juggle a career, time to exercise, kids, running a business, creating a business, relationships, etc. Everybody’s got a to-do list, and that to-do list more often than not is a source of great stress in their lives.

I used to have the same problem until I learned the ultimate time management strategy. Have you ever heard of the book, the 80/20 rule? It’s an interesting book. Basically what they’ve realized is that 80% of the results you get in your life come from 20% of your efforts. What the ultimate time management strategy does is, it helps you to identify the most important 20% of the actions that you take in your life that bring you 80% of your success and results.

Take out a piece of paper and write down the most important goals and outcomes that you have in your life. Number them in order of their overall importance in your life. After that list is completed, you then want to take your to do list and put a number next to each item that corresponds to the outcome it is related to.

Ideally I would recommend that you put your to-do list in a text format or in a spreadsheet on your computer. This way you can easily move things around or sort them in their order of importance.

Now you have all of your goals and outcomes written down and your to-do list is numbered with numbers that correspond to the outcomes that they are related to. What you’re going to do when you work on your to-do list is, you will now focus on doing things on your to-do list in the order of their importance to you achieving your goals and outcomes.

20 years ago when I was in college and was first learning the system from my life coach, I used one of those large desk calendars to schedule my days and weeks. At that time I was working part-time job as a bartender on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. I was also working full-time during the day as a chief estimator for a general contractor located in Miami Florida. In addition to those two jobs, I was also taking three or four classes per semester to finish my degree in construction management at Florida International University in Miami. I also had a pretty busy social life.

The problem was, until I started using this time management system I was feeling frustrated, pissed off and was not getting all the things done that I needed to do. I had been in college at that point for four years, and I still had at least two years of college to graduate even though I was only going for a bachelor of science in construction management degree. I was so busy and unorganized and that was also causing me to not have much of a social life anymore.

So I had to find the time to study, do homework, projects for school, work both my jobs and try to live and enjoy my life. It wasn’t going very well. However, when I started using the desk calendar, I blocked out time and scheduled everything that I absolutely had to get done each week. What I realized was that there were a lot of things on my to-do list that had absolutely nothing to do with achieving my goals or outcomes. I had also been spending my time doing things on my to-do list because they gave me a sense of accomplishment, but were not helping me to achieve my goals and outcomes. So by prioritizing my to-do list related to my goals and outcomes, it enabled me to only focus on doing the things that were going to bring me the results I was seeking.

My whole entire week from the time I got up at 6:30 AM in the morning, until the time I went to bed at 11 PM, was jam-packed full of work, school, homework and also scheduling time to have fun with my friends and enjoy my life. It was a real pain at times. I really hated all the things I had to do because it was overwhelming, but by scheduling every hour and half hour of every day and every week, it enabled me to get everything I wanted done and still find the time to enjoy my life. What was really fascinating to me about this was that I actually ended up having more time, or at least it seemed like I had more time than before I started using the ultimate time management strategy. The reason was, I was getting more things done that were related to my goals and outcomes than before. Since I scheduled even my free time, I had more of it where as before I was always putting things off and eliminating my free time because there was always something that was not getting done.

With the advent of technology, I no longer used the giant paper desk calendars to schedule my day. What I love about my iMac is that the schedule program looks and works exactly like my old paper desk calendar used to. The difference is, I have access to it from any computer or smartphone in the world.

The things that created problems for me before is, I would do things like cleaning my apartment or running errands at times I should have been doing other things that were way more important. However, the reason I did these things is it gave me a sense of accomplishment because I was able to do something and then cross it off my to-do list. The bad thing was that my priorities were not set, and I was doing things out of sequence and without regard to their priority of helping me achieve the overall goals and outcomes I’d set for myself.

I ended up spending almost 7 years getting a degree, and I’m not a doctor LOL. Just a simple four year bachelor of science degree. However, this time management strategy has enabled me to accomplish everything I’ve ever wanted, and things I never thought were even possible for me in an incredibly short period of time. By the time I was in my late 20’s, I had accomplished all the goals that I set for myself after I graduated high school. These were goals that I thought were going to take me an entire lifetime to accomplish.

If you want to be astounded at the true nature of what you are really, truly capable of accomplishing, then you need to implement the ultimate time management strategy into your life. It will make you way more efficient, successful and more fulfilled than you have ever been in your entire life! It’s an absolutely amazing strategy to have, and if you follow it and implement it into your daily routine (do your schedule first thing every morning), your life will become easier and your success will skyrocket. That much, I know for sure.

“By leaving behind your old self & taking a leap of faith into the unknown, you find out what you are truly capable of becoming.” – Unknown