If you feel stretched for time, chances are there are things you want to be doing that you just never seem to find the time to do. You feel so busy that you never get things finished and the idea of time for yourself or starting something new seems like a distant dream.

So, how would you spend your time, if time became available to you? You may just want to be more productive at work, make time for exercise, spend more time with your children or find time for hobbies and relaxation.  If you are struggling to find the time to meet these aims, you want to begin by examining how you are currently using your time. Look at the following ideas to help you identify how you use your time at the moment.

If you are serious about time management, you will want to write down how you spend your day. This will involve tracking how you spend each and every hour. You could do this for a day or even a week. Where are the gaps in your day? Could these be put to good use?

Of course chances are if you are short on time, you may not have the time to spend logging every activity you do in a day. If this is the case, a good plan would be to track how long you spend wasting time each day. Be alert to and monitor your own particular time wasters. Possibilities include: checking email too frequently (I just read about some research that found people check their email 40 times an hour), aimlessly browsing websites, going to make yet another cup of coffee, chatting with colleagues, switching on the television or just gazing out of the window.

Having identified your time wasters you can schedule a time each day when you will allow yourself to carry out these activities. Maybe you should tell yourself that you will do those activities after you have finished the task at hand.  When the time comes, you may find you no longer want to do them as they are just not interesting enough to bother with.

Some days you feel like you’ve achieved a great deal with your day, whereas others you feel ‘what a waste’.  Reflect on the differences in those days. Why were you so unproductive? Was there a change in your environment? How about your mood? The food you had eaten even? Did you not write a list? Was your list too long?

Get in touch with your concentration levels. Can you concentrate at a particular task for hours at a time or is 40-50 minutes your maximum? Monitor your behaviour if you are not sure. Armed with this knowledge you will be able to manage your time in a way that works personally for you.

Find out how good you are at planning and measuring time. Estimate how long it will take a task to do. Then time yourself doing it. If you underestimate the time taken, you will struggle to get things done. You may want to keep carrying out the task until there is a close match between estimated time and actual time.

Hopefully you will now have a good idea of how you currently manage your time. Now have a look at some ideas for how to improve your time management skills.

Other time management articles

The importance of time management.
How to manage your time.
Be motivated to maximise your time.