A lot of people have offered thousands of ideas about how to organize your time. It seems like if you wanted to, you could almost get a college degree in time management.
Use lists and spreadsheets, online calendar tools, write things down, set priorities, stay focused, organize your workspace. On and on. And a lot of the ideas are great suggestions.
But there is only one tip that makes every other idea work for you.
Spend most of your time on the thing you most want to do.
This is where you start. And it’s worth whatever time it takes for you to get clear about it.
Don’t major on the minors.
Why should you waste time pursuing something that you don’t really want. Why put precious hours and days and weeks of your limited life into chasing things that don’t matter to you. Finishing is important, but it doesn’t matter if you reach those goals or not. Because the goals themselves are meaningless to you.
Knowing your real goals makes you efficient.
You might know someone who seems incredibly inefficient and sloppy in how they use their time. Compared to you—with your highly organized, disciplined and detailed time management skills—they may even appear to be even lazy. But the truth may be exactly the opposite. Because if they are pursuing things they really want and you aren’t, you are the time waster.
Unless you are pursuing what you really want in life, you’re wasting your time.
