How to Manage Your Time Better

Are you constantly finding yourself behind at work or school? Do you arrive at the end of the day and realize you've accomplished nothing on your to-do list? Well, odds are, you're not very good at time management. And that is not doing your psychological health any favors. In fact, a study published in "Work and Stress" found that workers who didn't productively manage their time felt less in control of their lives. Here's the good news: You can get better. Paying attention to how you spend your time will help you manage it more effectively. And we're going to help you learn how to do just that. Today on Wellcast, we're going to get you in control of your day with our RACK method: Recording, Analyzing, and Changing. These are three easy steps to great time management. Pause and print a copy of our handy Wellcast Day Planner. Finished printing? Let's dive in. Step 1: Recording. When you wake up tomorrow, note the time in your day planner. As the day progresses, write down everything that you do. Yes, we mean everything. The 10 minutes you spent getting dressed. The half day of productive work. The hours you spent between social networking sites. We mean it all. Keep this up from the time you wake up until you go to sleep. Step 2: Analyzing. At the end of the day, go through this schedule and highlight any chunks of time that you don't feel were used productively. Pick out your five biggest time wasters in your day. Be honest with yourself. You spent a half an hour by the coffee machine talking to your coworker, you spent an hour on Facebook, and you stared into space for 20 minutes. Come on, you get the picture. Especially focus on the time wasters at work. Why? A study published by the British Medical Journal says that workplace stress is minimized by effective time management. It also says that workplace stress bleeds over into home life and undermines a relaxed life at home. Here's the ugly part: Add up all the time you wasted. How much productive time did you blow on activities that got you no results? Step 3: Changing. Now it's time to come up with a way to get that time back. Here are three ways to change your time-wasting habits and become a better time manager. 1. Prioritize. To-do lists are a really effective way to manage your time and your priorities. Set the number of tasks you have on this list to five and assign rankings to them in order of importance. 2. Declutter. Not only is decluttering great for your health, but you won't waste time digging around piles of stuff to find that one piece of paper that you really need. Check out our Wellcast on clutter for some helpful tips on lightening your load. 3. Schedule. Hey, we all try to kill two birds with one stone, but odds are multitasking will actually just stress you out and delay you even more. Instead, set aside blocks of time for individual activities. For each activity, set start and stop points. This way your day is cleanly segmented. Then stick to this schedule. Try going one week using these tips to reduce your wasted time. At the end of a week, figure out where you've improved your time management skills and how much time you've saved. Let's recap. Today you learned how to manage your time better by using our Wellcast RACK method. You recorded, analyzed, and hopefully changed how you use your time. You did this by learning how to prioritize your most important tasks, declutter your workspace to save you time, and you learned how to build yourself an effective schedule to block out your day. Hey, how did RACK work for you? We want to hear how much time you were wasting and how much you're saving now. Tweet us at WatchWellCast, email us at watchwellcast@gmail.com, or leave a comment down below. We'll see you next time.