How to Do More in Less Time

You know how some people seem to have it all? They're productive at work, they have excellent relationships with family and friends, and yet they still seem to have time for themselves.

Here at TheBlog, we decided to figure out their strategy. So, after researching and reading blogs, magazines, and books, we found five tips that made their way into most lists and that have worked for us personally.
Here are the top five:

1)Prioritize

When you get the more important things done, you'll have more time to do the things that you love because you won't be worrying about anything important that you didn't do. When things seem to be getting easier, you do them faster and build momentum.

Ex. Hypothetically, if you had to do homework and study for a quiz and a test, you'd do the homework first, study for the quiz next, and then finally study for the test if you weren't prioritizing. In doing so, there's a high chance that you'll procrastinate while doing your homework in order to not have to study for your quiz and test. But if you were prioritizing in order of test, quiz, then homework, everything will get progressively easier.

2)Be Focused

By being focused, you'd be doing the task better and more effectively, and being focused would decrease your chances of doing something wrong that would take more time to fix later on.

Ex. Lola was doing her math homework while thinking about a book report. She made careless mistakes that she later had to fix. Correcting the mistakes took her double the time it would have taken her to do the homework while completely focused.

3)Motivate/Reward Yourself

It's been proven that when you have something to look forward to when you finish a task, you'll do it as quickly as possible and will not procrastinate as much as opposed to if you had nothing to look forward to. (Warning: make sure to be focused while still being quick)

Ex. Roberto's boss asked him if he could finish his report before lunch. In order to please both his boss and his stomach, Roberto used lunch as a reward for finishing his report, thereby finishing the report in less time.

4)Break It Up

If you think of a 4-hour task as a 4-hour task, there's a higher chance of finishing it is 4-5 hours because of the human tendency to procrastinate. However, if you break a 4-hour task into a series of 10-minute, 15-minute, and 20-minute segments, you'll probably finish in 3 hours, including breaks. This is because you'll be more focused on the task at hand than on the task as a whole.

Ex. Rose had to write a 50-page essay one day, and decided that instead of focusing on the essay as a whole, she'd focus on writing the essay in two-page chunks. In doing so, she finished the essay in a much shorter time.

5)Form Habits

If there's a task you have to complete often or everyday, make sure to do it in the same place and time, because then after a while, it'll seem routine and not like a chore. This will make it easier to focus and follow through.

Ex. After deciding to lose some weight, Dante thought he'd take up running. He started out at seven minutes per mile, and decided to make running a habit. Dante got so used to it and improved so much while doing it every day that within the space of three months, he was able to run a mile in half the time it took him when he got started.

There's a reason these five techniques are so popular when it comes to time management.
Because they work.