Time management

It’s no secret in today’s world that time is a lot like money, you never have enough anymore. At this stage in my life the time factor is even more true. Between my personal life and family, the studio and classes, the video project, and the book manuscripts… it’s a wonder I feel like I am accomplishing anything anymore.

This recently came up when talking to a friend, too. Usually the topic brings up priorities, values, responsibility, and strategies. The first thing I thought of was managing technology. Everyone has their head in a smart phone or tablet now. And seriously, we used to function just fine without them. How much more efficiently could you manage your time if you weren’t constantly responding to social media or staying caught up on your news feeds?For example, another friend of mine went on a three day trip. After returning home, she had an inbox full of messages. I asked her if they were notification emails or actual messages that needed responding to. In her case the majority of the emails were the notification kind for likes, comments, etc. on social media. She had no idea there was a way to manage her settings to stop this from wasting her time on a regular basis.

I have certain email addresses tagged as important so messages come up first on my phone. Those get answered. Everything else gets prioritized until I can deal with it. I do the same with texts and phone calls by assigning certain ring tones. When my ears hear these tones, I know I can ignore or listen. It’s been very freeing and helped to manage technology and distractions that cause me to lose lots of my previous time.

I’ve put a boundary on my time when it comes to managing the outside distractions that prevent me from being productive. This is how I’m able to successfully manage my time and have technology working FOR me rather than against me!