Time is the most valuable resource. So if you want to be productive, you have to learn how to manage it effectively. To help you with that, we transcripted a tutorial made by Brian Tracy, for better perception and simpler quoting.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION
Brian Tracy: “Hello! Here are 6 time management tips that you can use to improve your organisational skills and increase you productivity. The more these tools you learn to use, the more that you’ll get done each day.
#1 Prepare in advance
You know the old saying “Proper prior preparation prevents poor performance”. The 6 P’s. And so prepare your worklist for following day the evening or night before. The last thing you do at the end of the day is you layout the day that’s coming. The best exercise is for you to plan the entire next day as the last thing you do before coming home from work.
When you plan the day the night before you subconscious mind then goes to work on your plans and goals while you’re asleep. Very often you wake up in the morning with ideas and insights that apply to the work of the day.
Now the major benefit of preparing your daily list the night before is that this exercise lets you sleep more soundly. A major reason for insomnia is people lying awake trying not to forget to remember everything that they have to do the following day. But ones you’ve written down everything you have to do on the list, it clears your mind and enables you to sleep deeply. This will help you increase your productivity throughout the whole next day of work because you will be more relaxed and more refreshed.
#2 Schedule your time
Scheduling your time reduces stress and releases energy. The very active using your organisational skills to plan your day, your week and your month, gives you a greater feel of control and will help increase productivity throughout your day. You’ll feel in charge of your life.
Planning your day in advance actually increases self-esteem and improves your sense of personal power. It gives you a feeling of being in control of your life and your work.
#3 Start early
To increase your productivity, start your day early. The more time you take to sit, think and plan, the better organized you will be in every area of your life.
In the biographies and autobiographies of successful women and men, almost all of them seem to have one thing in common. They’ve developed great organisational skills, and a habit of going to bed at a reasonable hour and rising early to start the day.
Many successful people like to arise at 5 or 5:30 a.m., so that they can have enough time to think and plan for the coming day. As a result, they are alway more effective than those who sleep in until the last possible moment.
A few minutes of quiet reflection before you begin any undertaking can save you many hours in executing the task. When you get up early and plan your day in advance, you tend to be more calm, more clear-headed and more creative throughout the day.
#4 Organisational skills
Resolve to improve your organisational skills and use a filing system both at home, at work, and on your computer. As much as 30% of the day is spent looking for misplaced items. These are things that are lost because they have not been filed correctly.
Does this sound familiar to you?
There are few activities so frustrating as spending your valuable time looking for misplaced information and materials because no thought was given to a filing and retrieval system.
The best and simplest of all filing systems is an alphabetical system. In conjunction with a filing system, you should have a master list or record of all your files in a single place, like on your desktop. This master list gives you the title of each file and tells you where the file is located.
# 5 Increase your productivity
With prime-time organise your life so that you’re doing creative work during your internal prime-time. Your internal prime-time is the time of day according to your body clock when you are the most alert and most productive.
Now for most people this time of highest performance is in the morning after resting the whole night. For some people, however, it’s in the evening.
Occasionally a writes, an artist or even an entertainer might find that his or her prime-time is in the early hours of the morning. Some people actually work all night and then sleep in the morning.
So it’s important that you’d be aware of your internal prime-time, when you function at your best, so that you could schedule your most important projects accordingly to increase your productivity.
Your most important work usually requires that you’d be at your best: rested, alert and creative. What time of the day do most you feel the very best and have the most energy?
You must also be aware of what is called external prime-ime. This is the time when you clients and customers most available. Each person should give some thought to structure in their day for both external and internal prime-time.
# 6 Air travel productivity
An important area where organisational skills are vital is travel, especially air travel. Everybody is travelling by air today and most people who fly waste that time when it could be very productive.
Some years ago a company called Hughes Airwest, a regional airline that once served the western US, hired a consulting firm to compare the efficiency of flying first class with flying economy class and with working in a normal office.
What they found was amazing! They found that one hour of uninterrupted worktime in an airplane yielded the equivalent of three hours of working in an office work environment. The keyword was “uninterrupted”.
If you plan ahead and plan your work before you leave for the airport, you can increase productivity by accomplishing enormous amount when you are in the air.
Use these techniques and use these methods to dramatically increase your productivity in the weeks ahead.”
