Peter Drucker, often considered the father of modern management, described time as a “unique, irreplaceable and necessary resource.”

Noting that most people take time for granted, Drucker observed, “Nothing else, perhaps, distinguishes effective executives as much as their tender loving care of time.” 

Why people struggle with managing time.

1. Not being clear about your priorities.
When you are not clear about your own priorities, you end up spending your time on other people’s priorities.

2. Not distinguishing between what’s urgent and what’s important.
You spend your time putting out fires instead of focusing on root causes.

3. Multi-tasking.
Getting easily distracted and hopping from task to task, never completely finishing one thing before picking up another.

4. Hyper-focusing on details.
When you over focus on the details, you lose sight of the big picture. You might end up doing one thing really well, and not finish the project.

5. Avoiding closure.
Finding one more thing to do and not being willing to bring the project in for a landing.

6. Procrastinating.
Putting tasks off to the last minute and misjudging how long it will take, or not accounting for unforeseen obstacles.

Procrastination is the thief of time.

By far and away, of all the reasons you might struggle with managing your time, procrastination is the most damning. With the other five issues, at least you are accomplishing something. Procrastination means you have not even started.

3 tips to stop procrastinating.

There’s an old saying, sometimes attributed to Mark Twain, that “ if you swallow a frog every morning you can be pretty sure that nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of the day.”

Brian Tracy, author of Eat That Frog offers three important rules to help you stop procrastinating. He says your “frog” is the biggest, most important task, the one you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don’t do something about it.

1. Eat your frog first thing in the morning.
Do it before you become distracted or tired. You’ll have more energy for the rest of your day.

2. If you have two frogs, eat the ugliest one first.
Start with you biggest, hardest and most important task first.

3. Since eating a frog is pretty gross, it doesn’t pay to sit and look at it for long.
Don’t draw it out. Eat it right away and get it over with.

This post was inspired by the release of the Third Edition of Eat That Frog: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time by my colleague Brian Tracy. I consider this book one of the best investments I made in my son’s college education. I gave it to him when he was struggling with his thesis and he attributes this book with his ability to graduate on time!
 
 

Photo credit: Wikipedia | Stop Procrastinating and Manage Your Scarcest Resource