Effective Time Management Skill: Are You a Waffler?

Effective time management skills start with decisions. Do you have trouble making decisions? Do you make decisions by not making decisions? After you make decisions you do change your mind? If this sounds like you, you may be a waffler. Waffling is a time management killer.

Why is it so hard for you to make decisions? The reason it’s so hard for you to make a decision is that you never know if you’re making the right decision. You don’t know if you’re making the right decision because you don’t have clear plans. You don’t have clear plans because you haven’t taken the time to formulate them, and you haven’t evaluated those plans for how well they will take you where you want to be in the long-term. Plus when you formulated those plans you may not have checked to make sure they would lead to actions that align with your values.

What could you do to make the decision making process easier for you? Start by identifying the things that are really important to you about how you live your life. These are your values. Formulate a plan for what you’re trying to accomplish in both the short-term and the long-term. Break those plans down into action items, and prioritize them so they can be entered directly into your planning system, making sure that your actions are in alignment with your values.

You’ve made your decision, now what? Deciding to do something gets you nowhere. Taking action gets the job done. When you know what to do, and when to do it without even having to think, your time passes quickly and the work gets done. At the end of the day you’re able to check lots of things off your to do list, and feel good about what you’ve accomplished that day.

Notice how much less stress you have now that you aren’t waffling. Waffling over decisions takes a lot of time and causes a lot of unnecessary stress. When you’re able to make decisions quickly and take action things get done faster, and you aren’t in an emotional turmoil wondering if you’ve made the right decision. Will you always make the right decision? Probably not, but you’ve provided yourself with everything you need to make the best decision based on the information you have at hand.