Time is among the most valuable of resources and all you can do with it is use it. You cannot save it and once spent, you can never get it back. You cannot buy more and you cannot steal it from someone else.

Spending time wisely naturally plays a big role in the level of success a person can achieve. You can read all the self help literature you want but without some sort of plan for your day, your day will simply “happen” to you. You will not accomplish much and you will miss out on new opportunities because you will be in such a constant state of being behind, that you will be out of time for anything else.

When you “participate” in your day, you are more efficient, less prone to stress, and caught up on tasks, leaving more time for leisure. The self help key to participating in your life is time management.

Time management begins with planning your day. Set a time each day or the night before to think about what needs to be done that day. Schedule this time just like an appointment and stick to it every single day.

Lastly, take your bigger projects and divide them into smaller more manageable tasks. They will get done quicker because you won’t dread them so much, and your other, smaller tasks will not suffer because of it.

Break these bigger tasks down into several smaller tasks so that they can be finished a little at a time, while not consuming your whole day. Lastly, get into routines for your recurring daily tasks such as reading email, reading the news, working on projects, etc.

Otherwise they will pile up and leave you feeling stressed and overwhelmed. The other big time waster is the time spent starting a new project. There are some things we just do not want to do.

Either finish it at the moment or schedule a more appropriate time and forget about it until then. Unless deeply focused on one project, handle as many as you can of the small, unexpected tasks as they come, rather than putting them off until later. This will prevent them from piling up and leaving you feeling overwhelmed.