A few decades ago you could easily speak of two major time chapters in everyone’s life, personal and professional life. To find a balance between the two is more a matter of awareness and prioritizing.

Nowadays this image of time is not sufficient anymore to define correctly what you would wish to happen in your life. Family and friends take time, hobbies have an important place, social relationships are a part of success, self improvement (physical or intellectual) is of a major interest. So time structure has become more complex and finding equilibrium is not a simple matter anymore. A short conclusion to all these would be that in 24 hours you don’t have sufficient place anymore for what you aim to achieve. This may sound paradoxical, but in reality “You have too much time!”

Here are some ways for a more efficient time usage. Applying them leads either to being able to do the same things as before but without feeling dead tired at the end of the day, or to being able to allow yourself more time for other loved activities you couldn’t do before.

PRIORITIZING

We often wake up being “bought” by persons who succeed in passing on to us a sense of urgency only for them to be able to check off an activity on their to-do list without being time pressured. We do not always verify if it is a real emergency. Entering this trap we transform our own unimportant tasks into crises, and to solve them we often sacrifice our own personal time.

MICROMANAGEMENT VS. MANAGEMENT

For some managers the temptation of being involved in the company’s every small detail is irresistible. This is micromanagement. Simply taking notice and validating some activities is time wasting. The antidote is to involve oneself in the small activities only when one observes that things are not following the normal course.

TO DO LIST

It’s not about using this instrument, because most of us do so, but about how you use it. Many interactions during a work day like talks, meetings, emails, phone calls, all are covert activities, meaning they give you something to do. It is hard to prioritize with so many things around to do. You have to put them all on a single list.

THE BREAKS

The natural aim of the breaks is to relax or disconnect you. For some persons they don’t have this effect simply because they happen when they are not supposed to, leading to tiredness, loss of efficiency and in many cases the extension of work time in the detriment of the personal time.