Ten Tips to Maximize Your Time

Here are ten tips that we’ve found will maximize your time. We all have the same amount of time each day. So use each of the 1,440 minutes you have in a day the best way possible.
Maximize Your Time:

1. Set Priorities – when you know what’s most important, you maximize your time because you spend it wisely. Throughout the day ask yourself, “what is the most valuable use of my time, right now?”
2. Move – a lesson from the Corporate Athlete – to your body, sitting is the equivalent of putting your computer in sleep mode. Sleep mode doesn’t make optimal use of your time. To increase your focus throughout the day, add movement. Some ways to do that include – stand up meetings, walking 1:1’s, a stand-up desk or periodically getting out of your chair and doing 10 squats. The gluteus muscle is the largest muscle in the human body. Doing squats activates this large muscle and immediately increases blood flow. Blood flow increases your brain processes which gives you the focus you need to achieve your priorities.
3. Prioritize Sleep – we all have a longer “to do list” than we have time to complete.We often think that getting a few more things done is better than sleep. When you reduce your nightly Zzzzz’s, you hurt critical cognitive processes. Lack of sleep impairs attention, alertness, concentration, reasoning, and problem solving. Experts say that every hour of sleep you lose translates to a temporary IQ loss of one point.
4. Give it Up – free your mind and you’ll free your time. Do you have mental baggage that consumes your thoughts? That’s a time sucker, so give it up! Check out this fabulous book for more insights on what you can give up. Or read the list that the book is based on 15 Things You Should Give Up to Be Happy.
5. Focus on Your ENERGY  – this was the greatest ah-ha we had when reading The Power of Full Engagement. The concept is very simple. No matter how well planned your day is, if you don’t have the energy to do everything on your schedule then you aren’t performing at your peak. While the number of hours in a day is fixed, the quantity and quality of energy available to you is not.
6. Enjoy the Journey – pause and appreciate the momements that make up your day. Add intentional moments of joy. Life is not defined by the amount of breaths you take. It’s the moments that take your breath away.
7. Be Where You Are – If you spend your time thinking about what just happened, what’s next or are mentally somewhere other than where you physically are, you risk missing the moment. When you are talking with someone, focus on the conversation. When you are at work, be fully at work. When you are with your family (put the phone away) BE with your family. Give people the gift of attention by being where you are. You will maximize your time just by being!
8. Own it – “run the day or it will run you.” Jim Rohn
9. Become a Time Bigot – be prejudiced against people using your time. @AudioDrPhillips
10. Minimize Meetings – there are many meetings people attend that are a waste of your time. So refuse to attend any meeting that has no agenda, has no outcome and you do not have  clear understanding of the value you bring. @HollyDDowling