A Self-Improvement Guide Worth Reading

A Self-Improvement Guide Worth Reading

There are different books and seminars that can help you gather some self-improvement guides. All these sources are against the negative factors in your life.

This self-improvement guide intends to offer you the best solutions to reduce or eliminate these factors for good.

Work, meetings, deadlines, appointments, telephone calls, shopping, taking the dogs out etc. – all these are things most people have to accomplish daily. Most of the times, on the waiting list there are other things like: family, friends and even ourselves.

Sometimes we discover too late that the points mentioned on the waiting lists are, in fact, the most important. Unfortunately, we do not realize this at all, so we find ourselves so unhappy.

Time is more than money – time means life and, more than that, it means our lives. We have the obligation not to surrender in stressful situations and to go fighting for the joy of living.

Let us not forget also that deficient management of time can produce tremendous health problems, both at the physical and mental level.

But there is good news! You can manage time. First step is to identify the elements that take much of your time. Normally, these are divided into two groups:

The external factors which include unexpected phone calls, very long phone conversations, unplanned visits, the policy of open doors, not sufficiently trained personnel, frequent meetings, interruptions caused by colleagues, friends and family etc.

The internal factors which relates strictly to our own persons. It includes priorities and objectives that change, the lack of a daily working plan, lack of self imposed deadlines, the tendency to take care of too many things at the same time, disorder, lateness in resolving the conflicts, incapacity of saying no, lack of decision, tiredness, etc.

By reading the above enumeration, you probably recalled similar situations that you went through. Now, all you have to do is to find a way to defeat and eliminate them, so that you can be the master of your own time again.

Here are three possible ways in which you can do that:

1. Write everything down.
Writing is useful, especially if you have a bad memory. Otherwise, you might fail to remember to go to important meetings, to make important phone calls, to answer messages you promised you would answer, etc.

You can also write down great ideas and inspirations that occur to you in the most unexpected moments.

2. Make a list of priorities.
It takes very little time to draw it and you can even do it while you are having your morning coffee. Write down the things you need to do that day in the order of their importance and urgency.

3. Learn to say no.
One big mistake that a lot of us make is that we put other people’s problems in front of ours. By always prioritizing them, we give rise to stress and we find ourselves unable to respect previous engagements.

All these advices are also present in Jean-Louis Servan-Schreiber’s book “New Art of Time Against Stress”. He invites us to meditate more and points out the basic fact that time management is also a philosophy of life.