30+ Practical Personal Time Management Ways And Habits

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When it comes to focusing on personal growth, product, and achieving goals, it’s extremely important that you know how to manage time for it. 

For your work and others, you still manage time because of a lot of reasons and pressure, but when it comes to personal time management, people tend to be lenient with it. 

But time management is as important for your personal life as it’s for your profession. To learn the right way to start, here is what can help.

How To Start With Personal Time Management? 

Similar to the method of doing big projects done by doing smaller steps, Persian time management can also be beneficial by starting with smaller things. 

This can help in boosting your personal care, productivity, and growth. 

Well, the method is called the OATS principle, which stands for Outcome  Activities, Timing, Schedule. 

Outcome 

The first one includes the outcomes that you need to achieve the next day, also the outcome can change and it’s worthwhile. 

Activities 

Now the list of activities you carry, for achieving the outcome you are setting for yourself. However make sure that you remember, this list is not the to-do list. 

Timing 

Next is putting a time estimate against your activities. Look for the past experience, and see how long you will take to complete it. 

Make sure you are estimating everything, be realistic and see what things can be delegated in order to save time and energy. 

Schedule 

This is important as you need to put each step into your schedule, that way you can start with the work, even small, and find fewer excuses to avoid. 

And here is what you need to do the basic understanding :

  • Start with defining your goals, what you want and what success looks like for you?
  • Set out the scope of work that you need to create the list which contains activities, it means breaking down the structure to make it easy to understand.
  • Estimate the time as well resources that you need to do each activity.
  • Schedule the activities into a logical sequence and use appreciate models.
  • Implement the plan, make sure that you are monitoring and controlling what you do.

Practical Ways For Boosting Personal Time Management 

Time management is the important part, not just for professional but personal life too. Not only does it help in improving individual overall growth, but it also reflects on their professional career as they become more productive, confident, and efficient. 

However, here are some of the practical ways to boost your personal time management.

Schedule Your Regular Breaks 

To be productive, the first thing you need to learn is when and why to take breaks. It’s a crucial aspect that helps in maximizing the result. Also, it helps in reducing the time when you feel exhausted and stressed. 

Instead of working for long hours, you need to schedule the breaks so you don’t forget and take them frequently. 

Schedule Reading To Every Day 

Books are a concerned source when it comes to wisdom. The more you read, the more wisdom you are exposing yourself to. 

Also reading books is not just a good source of entertainment, but you keep learning every day, it makes your time productive and contributes to self-growth. 

ways to make reading part of daily routine

To make sure you don’t skip the reading, schedule it in your schedule so it will be easier to follow.

Love What You Are Doing 

One of the reasons that make people unhappy is they are not satisfied with what they are doing. 

Find pleasure in work, it can help in improving the overall performance, but in personal life, you will be much more happy and calm.

Also don’t pressure yourself to succeed, do what you love, and have faith.

Know When You Need To Step Away 

You might be working for too long, or maybe it’s your family, there is always something where you focus a lot, maybe you are an entrepreneur. 

But all of these should have their limit, when you start to overdo, not just does the chase of success reduce because you are exhausting yourself but also fear starts to kick in. 

That’s why you need to step away from time to time in order to avoid stress. It’s also good for your mental and physical health along with being.

Never Stop Learning 

You stop growing when you are not learning, it applies to your personal and professional both. 

Choose what you like to know about and make you excited and learn about it. There are a lot of ways which you can use such as videos, documentaries, books, etc. 

To save time you can also consider audiobooks and podcasts, and keep yourself invested in something new. 

This is good for your self-confidence and makes you creative in general. 

Pick Up Something For Hobby 

Beyond doing things that you usually do, add something new to your list of hobbies. 

Maybe there is a new language or sport that you want to learn. It can help you in learning something new, add a skill to your skillset, boost confidence and self-improvement. 

Don’t Take Failing Too Seriously 

It’s difficult to continue when you put everything and fail, it affects your mind and willingness to achieve success. 

But there are so many examples out there who failed but still continue and now they are successful people. 

So, failing is not the dead end, it’s a sign that you need to change something in order to succeed.  However, don’t avoid it, review what you did and what went wrong, and continue again. 

Carry Something Where  You Can Write 

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is trusting your brain to remember small things especially when you need to focus on so many things. 

To not forget what you are supposed to do, carry something with you. It can be a diary or app since you can’t carry along to do it, these can help you in managing time well. 

Also with apps, you can track all things you need to do.

Complete The Most Important Task In the Morning 

Mark Twain’s method, Eat the frog comes in handy for personal time management as well. 

Do you need to focus on what work you need to do in the morning? Maybe it’s related to your personal growth or profession. Get it done in the morning so you have a free day to focus on other things. 

Don’t put it off to do it last time,  not just it will create pressure as time goes but your willingness to do anything reduces as the day ends. 

Create A Space Or Corner For Yourself 

With the right environment, it can help you in focusing better. So it’s important that you have a dedicated corner for what you do just like the workspace or reading area. 

However, it’s not important that you need to take something spacious especially when you don’t have much space. It can be a corner. Here you need to surround yourself with what you like and inspire yourself to be better. 

Consider Taking Small Steps 

When it comes to managing your personal time, you need to focus on starting small. A Lot of time, people start with something big and it ends up clashing with their other tasks. Not only do you have to start over but it makes it difficult to manage time effectively. 

Concrete On How To Do, Instead Of What Ifs

What ifs are not lovely bad, you need to be prepared for things that might go wrong. So you get the idea who you will handle it but when you start to overanalyze and overthink about the outcome, this might cause serious issues. 

Instead of doing actual work, you will be stuck in what-if scenarios, this also causes stress and anxiety, so focus on learning how to do it, instead of over-analyzing the situations. 

Seek Help When  You Feel Like It 

There are a lot of things which you are not sure about, maybe you lack skills or simply are not interested. Not just you can delegate but also ask the help of people who are around you. 

It includes your family, friends, spouse, colleague, and professionals. Consider the tasks and see who can help the best. Maybe it’s related to managing time for work, but your household work is consuming too much time, so you can ask your family and spouse for help. 

If it’s work, you can ask the team and coworkers for help. The point is not to bury yourself with work and responsibility, on top of that don’t add things you can’t handle. And seek help when you need it. 

Write Down Your Fears 

One of the reasons why people don’t invest in themselves is fear.  The feeling not just stops you from improving but also you waste a lot of time on things that don’t help you much. 

So it can be a fear of uncertainty, fear of risk, and public speaking, whatever it is, write it down. 

When you have a list of things you feel scared of, look for reasons and root problems that are causing it.

Maybe you are scared of public speaking because of a lack of understanding of language, then you can focus on that and improve. 

Level Up Your Skill Set 

Invest your time in learning skills, and add to your skillset. Don’t get too comfortable with what you already know. You need to look for more and keep adding. 

The more skills you have, the less fear you will face and it boosts your confidence. 

Wake Up 10 Minutes Early Everyday

To start off, you can set an alarm 10 minutes early, however in the beginning it doesn’t make a lot of difference but you will have practice. 

And exceed time according to your liking. When you wake up early, you have more time in hand and start the day earlier as compared to others. 

Have Weekly Routine To Exercise 

The better you start with keeping yourself in good shape, it can help you in getting better mentally and physically. 

You can do exercise, add it to your schedule. But if you don’t have time for everyday exercise then you can do weekly exercise. 

Create a routine, for example, go for a jog at least 3 times per week, for at least 30 minutes. 

Look Out For Blind Spots 

According to definition, blind spots are those areas where your eyes are not capable of seeing them. As for personal time management, it’s a thing you are not aware of. 

Not just such blind spots consume time and energy for no reason but you are not getting better because of it. 

To identify what are your blind spots, it can be something that triggers you or makes you feel angry, frustrated, and annoyed. The triggers can be the people, events, things, etc. 

Focus on identifying those blind spots in order to overcome it. 

Set BHAGs For Yourself 

Well, BHAGs stands for Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals, these are those goals that you never think to attempt. 

 Not only does it stretch you to go beyond your normal capacity but when you complete such goals, it makes you much more confident, and makes you feel good. 

Well to start with this, you need to start with these steps : 

  • Take your Deen amount to assess the situation you are in and then consider what will be your BHAG goals. 
  • Define your Sub Goals that will lead to the big goals. 
  • Track those sub-goals and make the changes whenever it’s needed. 
  • You also need to celebrate each sub-goal when you achieve it. It will make you feel charged to achieve the next subgoal. 

Acknowledge What Flaws You Have

One of the issues that lead to failure in time management is not knowing the flaws you have. 

It’s important to know that everyone has some flaws in them, the point is to understand and acknowledge, when you address those flaws, you can start working on them. 

Also, make sure you are doing it with self-love for yourself. Don’t get overly critical and dull your spirit, this is about finding where you need to improve instead of what is wrong with you. 

Track Your Bad Habits 

There are some of the habits you might have which are not productive and effective for you. 

This can include smoking, procrastinating, oversleeping, etc. 

To know how to get an understanding of your bad habits, the first thing you need to do is ask about your friends, family, and people around you. 

They can quickly find you the habits even though you are not familiar with them. 

This is important to identify trends in you, and this can be introspective and honest. 

To know which habit is a bad one, here are some of the criteria : 

  • It keeps you from becoming the best version of yourself. 
  • It harms your health as well as your wellness.
  • It makes repetitive negatives and causes behavior patterns.
  • You can stop the behavior using perseverance and willpower.
  • The habits might cause others to annoy, offense and something to be avoided. 

Remove People Who Are Negative Around You 

There is an average of 5 people whom you spend time with, this makes it much more important to know who you are spending time with. 

When you are spending time with those who are negative, it will reflect on your life and ruin your way of dealing with life. 

So you need to remove the negative people who are causing situations and problems with you. 

A Lot of time you can get rid of people completely, so you need to reduce the time and find people who share the same mindset and positive thoughts with you. 

Learn To Manage With Difficult Situations 

There are times when you deal with difficult people and situations from time to time. 

You need to understand how to deal with it, it can be your workplace, people’s inner circle, and other things. 

It’s important that you need to learn the right way of dealing with situations and managing people. 

Reduce The Time Spending On Apps 

Since a lot of people are using the app, it can be messaging, social media, or reading, however, this also wastes time and causes your focus to wander. 

It’s important that you list the apps which you are using on a daily basis. So you need to consider when and what can help you and what is wasting time. 

Ways To Add Self Care Routine In Your Time Management 

Self-care is an important part of your time management. When you are healthy, self-contained, and positive, you can do things much faster and easier. 

Taking proper care of yourself also leads to self-growth, development, and stress-free life. 

However, here are some of the self-care routines that you can adjust with time management. 

Take Deep Breaths 

Even though it doesn’t take much time and is easy to do, it still gets really hard when you are in the middle of a crisis. 

Managing your personal time needs a calm mind and for that, you should take deep breaths. 

Deep breathing helps in increasing circulation as it brings oxygen to the muscle and brain. This helps in boosting energy and making your organ, tissues, and muscle health. 

Eat Healthily 

Food is an important part of self-care, also to do things, you need energy in the body. That’s why focus on what you are eating. Set a healthy diet for yourself and make sure you are following it. 

Stay Hydrated 

The human body is composed of around 50 to 65% of water.  Body parts like lungs, heart, and brain are more than 70%. sp drinking water can make you healthy and also much more energetic. 

Set Schedule For Sleep 

Sleeping less is not something to be proud of, even though you are getting benefits now but in the long run, this will take a toll on your mental and physical health. 

Lack of sleep also causes emotional distress like feeling irritation, less understanding, and depression. 

Learn Expressing Gratitude 

Find time for expressing what you feel gratitude for, it can be morning so you can create a positive tone for the rest of the day.

Being grateful is the simplest but most powerful way of taking care of yourself. 

Do Something Pure For Fun 

Your time management and self-care should not just be about being productive always. You also need time for doing fun things,  so you can find stuff you feel happy and enjoy. It should not always carry the purpose, tangible benefit, or ROI. 

Set Time For Nature 

According to studies, it shows that spending time in nature can help you in having a lot of health benefits and lower stress hormone levels. 

So find time for yourself, this can help you in reducing fatigue and it can be a good way to get away from your desk. 

Eliminate The Negative And Toxicity 

The best way of doing self-care is to remove the toxicity and negativity from your life. 

You need to identify what is causing the issue and the negative in life.  You need to identify and remove or focus on spending less time on people and situations in which you are not comfortable and it drains the energy. 

Surround yourself with things and people that give you encouragement, positive energy, and love. 

Practice Doing Self Reflection 

Self-reflection is about taking a step back and giving time on reflecting on what you did and doing in life. See the behavior and beliefs that you carry with you. 

It is important for becoming the best version of yourself and boosting the chances of growing and reaching your full potential. 

practices to do for self reflection

It also helps you in processing certain feelings and thoughts that you might have. 

Minimize Things Around You 

Minimizing things around you can help in understanding what you need and what you can throw away. This saves your energy, time, and attention, and you focus on what is actually important to you.

Not just it applies to the room, but your thoughts and beliefs. 

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