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Time is your most precious resource.  It is the most valuable thing you have.  It is perishable, it is irreplaceable, and it cannot be saved.  It can only be reallocated from activities of lower value to activities of higher value.  All work requires time.  The very act of taking a moment to think about your time before you spend it will begin to improve your personal time management and increase productivity immediately. I used to think that time management was only a business tool, like a calculator or a cellular telephone.  It was something that you used to  increase productivity and eventually be paid more money.  Then I learned that time management is not a peripheral activity or skill.  It is the core skill upon which everything else in life depends.

Increase Productivity through Personal Goals

In your work or business life, there are so many demands on your time from other people that very little of your time is yours to use as you choose.  However, at home you can exert a tremendous amount of control over how you use your time and increase productivity throughout the day in your personal life. Personal time management begins with you.  It begins with your thinking through what is really important to you in life.  You need to set goals in three major areas of your life.  First, you need family and personal goals.  These are the reasons why you get up in the morning, why you work hard and upgrade your skills, why you worry about money and sometimes feel frustrated by the demands on your time. What are your family and personal goals, both tangible and intangible? A tangible family goal could be a bigger house, a better car, a larger television set, a vacation, or anything else that costs money.  An intangible goal would be to build a higher quality relationship with your spouse and children, to spend more time with your family going for walks or reading books.  Achieving these family and personal goals are the real essence of time management, and its major purpose.

Make Clear Business and Career Goals

The second area of goals are your business and career goals.  These are the “how” goals, the means by which you achieve your personal, “why” goals.  How can you achieve the level of income that will enable you to fulfill your family goals? How can you develop the skills and abilities to stay ahead of the curve in your career? Business and career goals are absolutely essential, especially when balanced with family and personal goals.

Personal Development Goals

The third type of goals are your personal development goals. Your outer life will be a reflection of your inner life. If you wish to achieve worthwhile things in your personal and your career life, you must become a worthwhile person in your own self-development. You must build yourself if you want to build your life.  Perhaps the greatest secret of success is that you can become anything you really want to become to achieve any goal that you really want to achieve. But in order to do it, you must go to work on yourself and never stop.

3 Key Time Management Actions

A principle of time management says that hard time pushes out soft time.  This means that hard time, such as working, will push out soft time, such as the time you spend with your family.  If you don’t get your work done at the office because you don’t use your time well, you almost invariably have to rob that time from your family.  As a result, because your family is important to you, you find yourself in a values conflict. There are three key questions that you can ask yourself continually to keep your personal life in balance.  The first question is, “What is really important to me?”  Whenever you find yourself with too much to do and too little time, stop and ask yourself, “What is it that is really important for me to do in this situation?”  Then, make sure that what you are doing is the answer to that question. The second question is, “What are my highest value activities?”  In your personal life, this means, “What are the things that I do that give me the greatest pleasure and satisfaction?  Of all the things that I could be doing at any one time, what are the things that I could do to add the greatest value to my life?” And the final question for you to ask over and over again is, “What is the most valuable use of my time right now?”  Since you can only do one thing at a time, you must constantly organize you life so that you are doing one thing, the most important thing, at every moment.

Set Personal Priorities

Personal time management enables you to choose what to do first, what to do second, and what not to do at all.  It enables you to organize every aspect of your life so that you can get the greatest joy, happiness, and satisfaction out of everything you do. Thank you for reading this article on time management and increasing productivity. Please share and comment below!

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About Brian Tracy — Brian is recognized as the top sales training and personal success authority in the world today. He has authored more than 60 books and has produced more than 500 audio and video learning programs on sales, management, business success and personal development, including worldwide bestseller The Psychology of Achievement. Brian’s goal is to help you achieve your personal and business goals faster and easier than you ever imagined. You can follow him on Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Linkedin and Youtube.