Personal Time Management: Achieving Superior Performance Doing the Things You Hate

Could personal time management actually be fun? When you think of time management you may associate time management with making yourself live by someone else’s rules so you have more time for work. That’s definitely not fun or a fun way to look at time management. We all have things we have to do that for one reason or another we just hate doing. I hate cleaning toilets, grocery shopping, and unloading the dishwasher to name just a few things. But I’ve found a way to make un-fun things a little more fun, and it may make your un-fun things a little more bearable too.

Have you found that a big part of your personal time management problems stem from failing to start? You hate doing whatever it is so much you dread starting, and the more you dread it the longer it takes to get yourself to start. And you’re wasting precious time that could be used for something else during all this dreading time. Figure out how long it would take you to do the task if you just started and did nothing else.

How long would it take you if you started it, and attacked it like your life depended on it rather than just half-heartedly working on it and maybe even leaving it partially done? Time yourself and try to beat your best time the next time you have to do one of the things you hate. If you don’t know how long it actually takes just guess the first time. I found that if I just start I can clean 3 toilets in 10 minutes, I can get all my groceries bought and in my car in one hour, and I can unload the dishwasher in 5 minutes. Why is that important? Once I realized how long things take I realized I could group them and get the things I hate out of the way all at one time. Plus I make it a little less miserable and a little more fun by trying to beat my best time.

Get the things you hate done first, so you have time for fun. When you beat your standardtime give yourself a little time related reward. Because I have all the yucky things done I have a couple hours to do something fun that I’ve wanted to do but didn’t think I had time for. If you could get all the things you hate done how much time would you have to do something you want to do, and what will you do?

Personal time management doesn’t have to be rigid and make you feel like a slave to the clock. When you improve your personal time management skills by changing how you behave you can reward yourself with the gift of free time. When its fun time just have fun, and don’t allow anything un-fun into that time period that you’ve set aside to reward yourself.