What is life? Difficult question to answer, but sometimes I feel, the more practical answer is "Life is Time". Yes; every moment past can never be retrieved. Time is the most precious commodity. Even money you are making is measure of how important is your time. Lots is said about time management and I am not adding anything new. I read few books on time management and based on that experience, I am herewith writing few pieces of advice-

Define the purpose/Goals of Time/Life

The foremost thing is life is we should know what to do with our time.  Let us suppose you have lot of time with you, what you are going to do? Whether you will go for a world trip or a mountain trial or just doze off?

Yes, before talking about time efficiency, one should clearly define what is their purpose - short time purpose, long time purpose of life. It is better to write down somewhere visible - what we want to do in life. Atleast we should know what we want to do in another three months time. I am not advocating one should quit what they are doing right now and start chasing wild dreams. I mean one should sit calmly and define their dreams. 

Capture what you are doing now?

Once you are clear of what you want/have to do, you should know what you are doing right now ? and how far you are from what you want to do? For this I used to capture what I am doing day-in /day-out in a Google Spreadsheet. I made rows of half-an-hour/one-hour time slots and each column for a day. Then I will fill up these as the day advances. Tough to do , but really helps in knowing what we are really doing? We come to know how much time we are wasting in useless meetings and unmindful mobile surfing.....

Cut the crap

Once we capture data , we will come to know that we are doing lot of crap. In this I would like to highlight 20/80 rule, myth of multi tasking and power of delegation/leveraging. 

20/80 rule - This rule says 80% of the outcomes are generally controlled by 20% of the things and vice versa. So find out what exactly the purpose you are hired by your company, you are married by spouse. If you don't know ask them and concentrate your efforts on these. 

Myth of multi-tasking  - Multi -tasking is a myth . You cannot travel on more than one boat at a time. Latest research quotes deep work is the right kind of doing work. Do one thing (the most important) at a time. Follow techniques like Pomodoro. Mobile and Social media are big distractions. If your job/business doesn't require you to be active on social media - you can delete your presence all together. Read my other articles on social media- http://dilipkumar.in/articles/my-life/conquered-facebook-but-succumbed-to-whatsapp.html  (2020) and http://dilipkumar.in/articles/sci-tech/health-effects-of-social-networking-good-and-bad.html (2011)

Power of delegation/leveraging - Don't be under impression that you are the right person to do all kinds of jobs. Delegate low return tasks. Follow 80/20 rule. Give tasks to your sub-ordinates/colleagues and Bosses (there are some works to be done by superiors - we have to keep politely highlight this).  Delegate only those tasks which doesn't require you to do and keep a regular follow up. Keep a track. Also don't overdo delegation - then you will be delegated and your job will be outsourced. Use the time to become more expert in your field.

Make a Plan for doing relevant

Now you know , what you are doing and where to go, now you should how to go there? So, sit down and make your plan.

Let us say your plan is to build a house. Make a broad plan - where to buy? what to buy (land/apartment)? how much cost? sources of income? when is the target date? Then make smaller goals. It is better to have a consistent sustainable pace for a longer race than running like a mad dog and getting exhausted. You can make a plan with initial goals of reading some basic books on House construction, reading reality clasifieds, doing some basic research on web etc. 

Time management is nothing but Goal Management. Identify Goals -> List them out-> Make a plan -> Execute the plan. 

In my experience I find Todoist mobile app and website is a good tool which can help in this Time management/goal management. It is free for basic uses and I feel that is sufficient for simple common people. This can be integrated to Google calendar. You can make projects , sections, tasks , assign time frame to it, you can have daily weekly tasks etc. You can also assign tasks to others who are using todoist... If you don't know about todoist -> you can learn further by visiting their website -> https://todoist.com/

Here it is how it looks - >