Time Management - Working SMART

In your working life it is unlikely that you will consciously waste time purely for the sake of it. The consequences of such destructive behaviour are obvious. You probably engaged at times in activities that apparently added nothing to your utility value of your time ie. idle chitchat with a colleague, flicking through a journal without really reading it, looking out the window, daydreaming. These are all examples of 'time stealers'.

Then you wake up and see how hard your fellow workers have been whilst you've been in your 'time zone' and even though your distraction was stimulated by a biological or psychological necessity to withdraw from the task, motivated by guilt and possibly anxiety, you attempt to hurry and catch up the lost time. The more conscious you become of having 'wasted' time the more enveloping that thought can become - to the point when the worry compromises your mental effort to re-focus on what you were supposed to be doing.

Doing more is not the issue. The value of what you get done is what counts. It's best to develop a strong sense of time and objectives. Well-clarified objectives meet several criteria, described by the acronym SMART:

S: Specific - Write down exactly what needs to be done.

M: Measurable - Measuring the quality/quantity of one's performance.

A: Achievable - The difficulty level of completing the task within the resources available.

R: Realistic - The difficulty level of completing the task within the time and not so easy that attaining them adds nothing to the value of your time.

T: Timed - Short-, medium- or long-term. Achieving short-term objectives lead to the achievement of medium-terms which in turn should lead to the achievement of long-term goals.

The very best time managers realize that they will never have enough time to do everything in their business and social lives that they would like to do. No one can do everything, and to try is to fail.

Aaron is a successful full-time internet marketer who has stepped off the time treadmill and understood the value of time. Aaron has been vigorously researching multiple money-making techniques and now provides step-by-step tutorials for other people who are looking to make money with the internet. Simply visit http://www.sourceofknowledge.org and sign up for the new experience.