Time Management: How to Reach Your Goals

Author: Tammy Taylor, CPT, BCS

Where does time go? Often, it can feel like we have fallen victim to a pick-pocketing time bandit. As soon as we turn our backs, this “bandit” stealthily swoops in, steals our time, and spends it frivolously. Consequently, we lose our minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and even years.

With our many obligations, balancing careers, kids, family, and friends seems to take up all 24 hours that have been allotted to us. So, it is no wonder that keeping our health goals as priority can require a bit of creative time management skills! If we do not not keep a close eye on our time and spend it wisely, we can almost guarantee that a time bandit will spend it for us!

Here are 3 ways to help you better manage your time and reach your goals:

1. Know your values

Values are core beliefs that help to determine how you want to live and work. When we don’t take time to plan, we go from trying to live intentionally to living impulsively. This means that even though we truly value our family and our health, we opt to scan social media, stuff in fast food, or skip our trip to gym, simply because we feel it’s easier and more convenient. Figuring out what our core values are isn’t always easy and can take a bit of time and reflection. A good exercise for seeking more clarity is to picture yourself writing your own obituary. How would you want people to remember you? Nothing creates more clarity than feeling like that sneaky time bandit has left us with a minimal amount of time left on this earth. 

2. Prioritize

Once you know what your values are, now it is time to prioritize what you can do to live authentically. Rank your to do list–high, medium, and low. High being the most important to get done that day and low being tasks you know can either wait to get done or can be delegated to someone else. Next, conquer the task you are dreading to do first. This task may not be the most important or time consuming, but you will find that once the dreaded task is done your head will feel much clearer to accomplish all those other tasks on your list! 

3. Don’t waste time waiting

Nothing lowers our defenses against the time bandit like procrastination. There is always going to be some barrier to overcome when trying to reach for your health goals; whether it is a wedding, a vacation, the holidays, insane work schedule, etcetera! Putting off a goal that we truly desire because we are waiting for the “perfect” time is like leaving your window open for the time bandit to come right inside your home and take as many hours of your life as they desire. The perfect time must be created and purposefully made by deciding that the perfect time is NOW.

For more ways to reach your goals, start your Noom trial today!