Would you like to improve your quality of life? If you were to answer ‘No’ to that question, I would be quite surprised. It is perfectly normal to always want to improve your quality of life. Even when you are happy with your life, you would still like to make improvements. It is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in action. The big problem is that most people focus on money when they want to improve their quality of life. This may be due to the conditioning imposed upon us by mass advertising i.e. the idea that if you buy product X, your life will be so much better. In reality, increased income is one of the least effective ways to improve your quality of life. The easiest and most effective means to improve your quality of life is to improve your time management so that you can focus your time on activities which add greater value to your life.
How to improve your quality of life with simple time management
The following steps will enable you to improve your quality of life with some simple time management practices.
1. Use a diary
Even if you are not using a diary to schedule your appointments, it is imperative that you at least use a diary to keep track of how you spend your time. Awareness is the key to successful change. If you wish to improve your quality of life, you must first know how you are spending your time. It can be as simple as keeping a page for each day. Each day can be broken into 15 minute segments where you can note what you did for each 15 minutes of your day.
Note: to ensure accuracy it is important that you record your activity immediately upon completion of each task. If you wait until the end of the day, you will not have an accurate recollection of events.
2. Track your energy
Energy management and time management go hand in hand. Energy is cyclical and you will naturally experience periods of low energy. During these times it is important that you perform less demanding work. You can then reserve periods of high energy for your most important tasks.
Every half hour, make a note of your energy levels. You can give it a rating of -5 to +5. At the end of the day, you can then plot this on a graph to see how your energy flow changed throughout the day. You can consult your diary to ensure that you are performing your tasks during periods of appropriate energy e.g. demanding tasks during high energy periods.
3. Remove unimportant events
Now that you are recording each task that you perform, you will be able to work through each task that is not really important. These tasks are robbing you of precious time and energy while contributing little or nothing of value to your life. The preferable option would be to simply stop performing these tasks. It this is not possible, there are a number of others options which you can consider:
- Automate
- Delegate
- Outsource
4. Schedule more important and enjoyable tasks
Once you have removed the unimportant tasks, it is important that you move quickly to replace them with tasks of greater importance. If you wait too long to do this, you will find that the space you have created has been filled up with more meaningless tasks. This may include activities that bring more joy to your life; they do not necessarily have to be work related.
5. Schedule activities which increase your energy
Increasing your energy levels will naturally improve your quality of life by giving you more zest for life. Not only will you be able to identify more challenging goals for yourself but you will have the extra energy required to pursue them. When looking to increase your energy, do not just think of your physical energy. Consider your mental, spiritual and emotional energy too.
6. Schedule activities which absorb you
It is important to have activities in life which absorb all of your attention. When you have these activities, they allow you to forget the stress and the worries which you have in other areas of your life. For that period of time where enjoy these absorbing activities, you get to escape and live in a world of pleasure. For me, it can be as simple as watching a few funny YouTube videos or listening to one of my favourite albums.
Obviously, if your life was full of these activities, you might struggle to get a lot done but you should try to squeeze some of these activities into each day. The difference they make is immeasurable.
7. Balance work and play
When you strive to improve your quality of life, you must improve the balance of your life. Balance does not mean that you enjoy everything in equal measure. It requires that you find time for the most important things in your life, covering each area of your life. It cannot be all about obligations and work. There must be time for fun, socialising and family too.
Take the time to identify the things that bring you the greatest joy and schedule them and make them happen because if you do not schedule them, they will never happen e.g. while I have never had any interest in a school reunion, I have on countless occasions heard my old class mates talk about how much they would love a reunion. They have even chastised me for my lack of interest. Seventeen years after leaving school, they are still talking about it but they are no closer to having a reunion.
You can learn to master time management with The Organised Mind.
If you wish to improve your quality of life, you need to give it priority in your life. You won’t improve your quality of life by accident and nobody is going to come along and improve it for you. The best way to begin is by focusing on how you are using your time and identifying improvements you can make. When you identify and make these improvements, you will improve your quality of life quickly and easily. You will come to realise that you can regularly review how you spend your time and make a few simple adjustments to improve your quality of life even further. It is a simple process which, when repeated, can reap amazing results.
Image credit: Jared Loman