This post is not going to be about social media, per se. However, whenever I have expressed the importance of having a strong social media presence to business owners and what it involves- their first response is who really has the time ? Exactly! Who does? This is why you must hire a social media manager to take care of that for you. Because business owners need that precious time to focus on their business. Heck, even myself as a social media manager needs assistance with my own social media. Between managing my business, family and other personal stuff, creating a strong online presence takes a lot of time. So let’s get off the topic of social media and let’s talk about time management.

Time management is one of the least mastered and most desired skills in this very fast paced world we live in. Time management truly is critical to becoming successful, doing everything you want to, and achieving ultimate success.

How Can You Manage Your Time Effectively?

This is what you must do in order to manage your time much better.

1. Get Rid of Time Wasters. Time wasters are things that interrupt you and you spend time doing, but you wouldn?t have chosen to do them given the choice. Eliminating these time wasters is critical for time management. A few are-

Television– Television is a huge time waster. If you have to balance a lot in your life such as work, family, self care, etc, it is best to limit yourself to watching no more than a half hour of television a day. Luckily for me I do not watch a lot of TV as it is. I tend to have it on in the background because I like having background noise. I am not sure if that is really recommended either. However I do not things slide due to wasting time on watching television.

Email– Unless you are having to answer emails for your business (which you may want to hire a VA for), you really do not want to spend more than a half hour a day on answering emails if you can help it. Especially during your working hours. If you have to write long letters to those who you have been meaning to email for eons, dedicate a time to do that during your off hours.

Telephone– If you answer the phone more than five times a day, you are wasting a lot of time. Again you can hire a VA to deal with the phone calls when it comes to business. Or just let it go into voice mail. Dedicate a time in your day to return calls and do not spend more than a half hour doing so. The only time you should let phone calls interrupt your day is if you are expecting a call at a particular day or time.

Social Media– Yes I said it! You know you need to have a strong social media presence however, as a business owner you cannot manage it while taking care of your business at the same time effectively. That is what social media managers are there to do!

2. Create a list of what is genuinely important in your life and just start doing the things on your list. One of the keys to time management is prioritization! You absolutely must know what you want to accomplish and then go do it. Today?s world has too many distractions and when you allow those distractions to become priority, you sacrifice time management. Follow the following steps:

? Create that list of what you want to accomplish

? Set deadlines for accomplishing each item

? Organize each item in order of importance

? Create a game plan for achieving each of your goals in its respective time frame

3. Start focusing on time management throughout the course of the day and be consistent with it. After you have determined your goals and your priorities, just get it done. If something is not on your goals list for this week, then eliminate it unless an emergency comes up, then you will have to make adjustments. Remember this, when you prioritize every interruption that occurs and put your goals last, you will never accomplish what you want to accomplish. Instead, you will be a slave (as you probably are now) to interruptions and probably feel like you never accomplish enough. This is why time management is extremely important in order for you to achieve what you want.