Before you can figure out how to optimize your time, get a good sense for how you already manage day-to-day affairs. If you have to attend school or work, these hours are already managed for you. In your free time, you have a much greater degree of flexibility. Spend a few days keeping track of how you spend your time. Write down exactly what you do every day. Pay close attention to how you spend free time. Do you play video games, or do you clean the house? Make a list of these activities and how long you spend on them. It’s likely that you spend a relatively large amount of some of your days simply traveling to or from work or school, or running errands. This is time that’s necessary to keep your days organized and complete essential tasks. Notice how long these commutes typically take and allot enough time in your daily schedule to get from place to place. Adjust your schedule based upon these times. As you design your daily schedule, think about how you will structure your various tasks. It might be a good idea to rearrange some of your tasks so that you can maximize your productivity. For example, figure out when you can work most productively. Determine when you will get distracted answering the phone or emails. You may find that you work best in the early morning, while mid-afternoon is a time when you get bombarded with phone calls. Keeping a daily schedule is very much about learning how routines affect your day-to-day life. Sometimes routines can be bad habits, which might actually keep you from getting pleasure or reaching your goals. Other routines are necessary for these things to occur. As you experiment with scheduling your time, think about the role routines already play in your life.  For example, you might notice a trend in your daily life whereby you tire yourself out doing an activity you enjoy. Then you don’t have the desire or energy to do anything else, such as working towards a longer term goal. On the other hand, you could spend all of your time meeting one social demand after the next to where you never make time for self-care. Each of these routines can be equally harmful to your personal well-being. So it’s important to take note of how routines affect your life. As you start to notice the routine in your life that keep you from meeting your goals or getting what you desire, think of ways to alter them in order to get more out of your time. This could be as simple as putting restrictions around certain activities, such as playing video games. Perhaps you’ll only permit yourself to play them after you complete a task relevant to a long-term goal. Or maybe it is necessary to learn how to tell people no when they ask you to do something so that you can work on self-care. There may be parts of your day that seem to waste time. Many of these may be unavoidable, such as your morning commute or going to the post office at lunchtime when it’s busiest. Take a look at your schedule and figure out the moments in which time is wasted. Think about how you might rearrange your schedule to reduce time wasters. If you can’t rearrange things, consider if you can multitask. Get some quiet time during your morning commute by riding the bus. Then you may be able to enjoy some coffee while reading a novel. It’s usually best to make plans for your day in advance. If you have never made a schedule before, it might take some time to work out all of the kinks. Don’t expect yourself to figure this out the first day, or even the first week. Make a rough schedule for the next day where you list all of the activities you want to complete and the amount of time you want to spend on each. Allow some flexibility as you get acclimated to having your time budgeted.
اكتشف كيف تقضي وقتك. حاول تقدير الوقت الذي تستغرقه في التنقل إلى العمل أو مكان الدراسة أو أي مأمورية أخرى. حدد الأوقات التي تكون فيها غزير الإنتاج. أعط اهتمامًا خاصًا لتعرف كيف يؤثر الروتين في حياتك اليومية. قلل الوقت الضائع. خطط ليومك في الليلة السابقة.