8 Ways to Organize Your Time Wisely

One of the best ways to use your time wisely is to have a plan of action. We  used to call it an OpPlan for Operations Plan. If you know what you’ll  be working on tomorrow, you’ll develop the mindset of productivity to  get er done. It also keeps you from thinking about work during your  “off” time.

Here are some great tips to do at the end of your work day. Set aside  a few minutes when you’re done with work to make sure these things are  in order. When you get up the next day, ready to work, you’ll already be  ahead by having this lined out.

1. Put away and tidy all of your work materials so they are ready for the next day.
No one wants to walk into a cluttered office to work. This steals  your work time because you need to get it organized before you can even  concentrate on work. Take care of this at the “end” of the work day so  it’s all set up when you return to your desk the next morning.

2. Look over the next days task list so you have an idea of what’s ahead. Adjust it if necessary.

If you plan your week ahead of time there should be no question as to  what you need to tomorrow. However, if you like doing things on a day  to day basis, this is a good time to plan tomorrow’s work.

3. Review the work you did today. This is where a running “I did  this” list comes in handy. If you’ve written down everything you  accomplished throughout the day, you can go over this list and find out  how well your day went. It’s likely you forget a lot of the small things  you did during the day. If they are written down, you’ll remember them.

4. Celebrate your success. If you finished your task list and had a  productive day, then give yourself a pat on the back or a special treat.

Even small milestones deserve to be treated as something special. If  you start doing this you’ll want more of it. Just give yourself  something special each day that you finish your tasks. It needs to be  something small, but meaningful.

If you’re working on a big project you’ll want to give yourself a  bigger treat when it’s complete, but don’t forget to reward the small  steps either.

5. Perform daily or weekly maintenance on your computer.Set aside time for this every day or every week. Do not do this  during productive time. These things can generally be done while you are  on social networks or while you’re reading a book. If you need to  organize files you’ll want less distractions, but running virus programs  or disk defragmenting can be done while you read or straighten up your  office for the next day.

6. Plan tomorrow if you haven’t already done so.This goes along with #2 listed above. It’s best to have a weekly plan  broken down into daily tasks, but if that’s too strict for you, then  plan each day at the end of your work day.

7. Unwind. The work day is done, leave it at the office, even if it’s  your home office. Enjoy some you time or time with family. Only work  after work hours if it is absolutely necessary.

8. Do a final check of email, social sites, paypal or any other  business transactions. This is also a good time to check your website  stats and things of that nature. I recommend you do this weekly and not  daily, but it will give you a good idea if you need to focus more time  on traffic and such.

By doing theses steps ahead of time, you will find yourself much more likely to have more time the next day.