Have you ever wished you had 32 hours in a day! Alas, we all do sometime or the other. Time is a luxury nobody can afford. Be it Bill Gates to Marissa Mayor to Mark Zuckerberg, none has it enough, and no amount of money can buy us extra hours in a day.

Most of us IT guys have one issue in common, multifarious activities that require hopping from one desk to another, attend n number of meetings and finally, we never seem to manage our day in the best possible way.

Though no strategy seems to be perfect while managing time, as it's different from person to person and their abilities to carry out tasks, here is a how-to-do list you can find easy to follow:

Let’s take a Closer Look

We can't always replicate someone else's time table or ways of dealing with tasks. The first step to good time management is by observing the ways others spend their time and how you spend your time. Once you make a note of it, you can see how and where time goes. If you can become aware of the things that slow you down, it will definitely become easier for you to make different and more effective choices.

Now, coming to the second step, it's about making the right choices. To make these choices, determination comes into it may take a while to adopt new practices. Adopting new habits can be pretty tough. But if you want to achieve different results then you have to make different choices.

Saying 'No' Aint So Easy

Sometimes even if our hands are all full and we are walking on the rope trying to balance what we already are handling, we find it difficult to say no to further work assignments. Sometimes we misjudge our ability and the requirement which eventually leads to a disaster. And if we are working in a team, we tend to jeopardize the whole project just by that one individual failure. This is when we have to really be a good judge of our abilities and the criticality of a task before committing anything. But saying no isn't always easy especially if the task seems important and urgent. But saying no is probably the right decision at that moment which can pay high dividends later. It's not necessary to reply immediately with a 'yes' or 'no' but take some time to evaluate the task and then take a wise decision.

Don't take more than you can chew

Isn't it a common tendency to be over enthusiastic at times! We all go through the phases when we are so willed to prove ourselves that we take on more responsibility than we can handle and ultimately it breaks down like a castle of cards in just one blow.
This also happens to be the biggest culprit of under productivity. The secret to good productivity is to take up as much as you can deliver and do it your best. Too much of too many things can lead to an intellectual diarrhea. So be wise in what all you serve in your platter, you can always go for seconds.

Ah' the So Cool Way to Organize

A To-do-list

Now, making to-do-lists may sound a little boring. But pause for a moment and think, how it can actually sort the mess out and ease out all your tasks. Make a list of tasks and categorize as urgent, moderate and less urgent tasks. But at the end, to make a list is again a small task, the bigger responsibility is to follow it strictly.

Get a guru/mentor/coach – whatever you call it

If Michael Jordan can need a coach to be what he became, then so do we. It's not about going to a person with all your worries cribbing about your inability to perform it's about taking advices and acting on those. To enhance skills, take right decisions and create a clear path to reach your goals, None is going to spoon feed you but for that push or the kick, we do need a person to teach us and root us on.

Finally, nothing beats self motivation We are all tuned differently. The way it works for one may not work for another and the third one out there. So we need to know how best we can keep our focus in line with our deliveries without depending on anyone else. Usually about 85% of the things we hear is usually negative that sets our clock to move in opposite direction and we tend to lose focus. So it's all about keeping yourself motivated. 

Trick is to use about 15-20 minutes doing a short planning, be it on a piece of paper, your smartphone or your laptop. Those few minutes can prove vital for the success of your day. They can either make or break your day. 

So be wise, make proper plans, live them and enjoy rich rewards in terms of higher productivity and enhanced quality.