The to-do lists of women are often long, because it not only includes personal priorities, but it also includes prioritising your family, partner, extended family, in-laws, boss and colleagues. It can be never-ending, so how do you find the right balance, take care of everyone and everything else in your life without neglecting yourself? Margarita Tartakovsky, associate editor on Psych Central, shares some ideas on how to make time for the things you want to do. Here’s some of her tips.
- Get rid of traditional to-do-lists.
Tartakovsky says that with the traditional to-do-lists, you list everything you need to do without assigning an accurate time in which it will take to complete it. Therefore, you end up with a lengthy list of tasks that are impossible to complete in one day. She says it is best to think through how long it will take you to complete a task and to overestimate rather than underestimate how long it will take for you to complete it.
- Make your personal time top priorities.
Doing pleasant things for yourself, like going for lunch with a friend, getting your hair done and going for a spa treatment is often put on the back burner. Tartakovsky suggests making these items non-negotiables on your list and “treat your top priorities as appointments you can’t cancel, as appointments you protect on your calendar.”
- Do it first
Apart from making your top priorities non-negotiables, do them first. By doing them first thing in the morning, you make sure you get them done before your day gets busy.
- Create a “stop doing that” list.
We all have a list of things we do daily that are time wasters such as aimlessly scrolling through social media, thinking and worrying about work, replaying negative incidents. Make a list of the things you do, so that you can identify when you’re doing it.
For more tips on how to make time for the things you want to do, read the full article here.
