5 Common Bad Time Management Habits to Avoid | Brian Tracy

Hello, I'm Brian Tracy and today I want to talk to you about common bad time management habits to avoid do one thing at a time. You'll be able to get each task done efficiently and effectively with fewer mistakes and problems. Time management skills are critical in all areas of life, personal, professional, and everything in between. Being able to manage your time wisely ensures that you get all your tasks and obligations completed on schedule. When you feel like you've wasted time, you become stressed and overwhelmed. Missing a deadline or not finishing a deliverable in time can set you back in more ways than one. With so many resources out there, you want to be certain that you're receiving the right tips to improve your time management. So here are some things to avoid when looking to improve your time management along with some of my own tips that will help you instead. The first thing to avoid is not setting your own personal goals. Personal goal setting is essential to managing your time well. When you don't have a goal in place that you want to achieve, it's easy to lose focus of your priorities. But when you put short and long term goals in place and write them down, you give yourself a destination and a vision to work towards. Without those, you will find it difficult to prioritize your time and energy. If you know where you want to go, you can properly manage how you will be allocating your skills and resources. Without goals, you will find that your time is often being wasted on unimportant things and activities. Setting goals will help you to decide what is worth spending your time on and what can just be considered a distraction. The second time management tip many fail to do is keeping a to do list. Once you set goals, you'll be on your way to developing better time management skills. But without a to do list, it'll be much harder than it needs to be. A to do list helps you prioritize your tasks by writing them down. Studies show that writing helps to extract the information we hear from and remember it better than we would if we had just heard or read it. That's why it's easy to remember what's on your to do list even when you aren't looking at it. Once you write your tasks down, you'll remember to get them done throughout the day. Using lists effectively lies in prioritizing the tasks on your list. Make sure your most important tasks are at the top and that you know the steps it takes to fulfill them. This will allow you to set aside enough time to complete your tasks without feeling rushed. The next thing to avoid is not Allowing Yourself Enough Time Sometimes we get impatient and overwhelmed when we think of the tasks we need to do, and instead of it motivating ourselves to do them, we procrastinate and push them off until later. While you may feel instant gratification that way, the long term effects will be anything but satisfying. When you procrastinate, you don't give yourself enough time to complete your tasks and end up having to rush to complete them. This can ultimately affect the quality of your work and require that you do it over again. To avoid this, set up action items that keep you from procrastinating. Create a schedule to follow and give yourself breaks in between so that you don't get burned out. Try to get some of your tasks done early so that you can free up your plate quickly and efficiently. The fourth thing many people should avoid to improve their time management is to stop always saying yes to others. At some time in their life, everyone has felt stretched out too thin or have bitten off more than they could chew. When we take on more projects than we can handle, or we say yes to too many plans, you're not leaving enough time for yourself and your priorities. So it's important that you understand the types of tasks you should be saying yes to. Like helping a boss with an optional task that can help your career trajectory. It's also essential to set boundaries with people and let them know that certain tasks will take priority over others, especially their tasks. If you say yes to take something on, ensure that you actually have enough time to complete this task. You don't want to create a reputation for producing rushed or low quality work. And finally, the last thing to avoid when improving your time management is multitasking. When you're finding it difficult to complete a task, think about what's stopping you from completing it. A lot of the time it's because you're distracted while doing it. You may have your phone out, your mind is focused on another project, you're talking to someone. The list goes on. When you stop the distractions and focus solely on the task you're meant to do, your most important task, you'll see a huge difference in how long it takes you to complete it. Same thing goes for trying to be present in a meeting while also working on a project at the same time. The great rule is leave things off when you're trying to get something done. While both are productive tasks, your lack of full attention on either will be obvious. You may miss out on important information from the meeting or miss a critical piece in completing the project because you tried to do it all at the same time. By giving your attention to one thing at a time, you will be able to get each each task done efficiently and effectively with fewer mistakes and problems. If you need help setting goals, check out my 14 day goal setting challenge to help you prioritize your time, develop better time management skills and change your life. And it's completely free now. I'd love to hear from you. So my question today is this. What's the biggest distraction you cut out that has helped you to improve your time management? Leave a comment below and I'll be sure to follow up with you. Thanks for watching. And remember, if you want to change your future, take action. And take action now. If you enjoyed this video and feel it was valuable in teaching you about common bad time management tactics to avoid, subscribe to my channel like this video and share this video with your friends. Don't forget to click the button on the screen for a free gift. Thanks again for watching.