Many of us say new year new me, but the odds of some of our New Year resolutions going stagnant is uncomfortably possible if we don’t set good New Year’s resolutions and attainable New Year’s goals. What is a New Year’s resolution? It is a goal that we set for our self to achieve in the year ahead. Most of us will have more than one New Year’s resolution, and often several common New Year’s resolutions. How can we keep track of these New Year goals? Many New Year’s goals and common resolutions fall under the category of better time management.

What is my resolution? Better time management.

The top New Year’s resolutions all center around better time management. What is time management? Time management is simply using the hours in your day more effectively. The importance of time management is crucial to your New Year’s resolution ideas.

Managing your time more effectively is the best resolution to strive for in 2020! Why is time management important to your New Year resolution ideas? The broader goal of improving time management activities categorizes multiple smaller successes on a list of resolutions that we can strive for daily in our professional and personal lives. Think about all the facets of your life that can be improved with the resolution example of better time management strategies. What is a New Year resolution, if only to create a more fulfilling life for ourselves and those around us?

Time Management Techniques

Better time management techniques can improve:

• Work-life balance.
• Social media habits.
• Cell phone and television habits.
• Fitness and health.
• Stress levels.
• Hobbies.
• Personal and professional goals.
• Finances.
• Housework.
• Relationships.
• Mindfulness, gratefulness, and patience.
• Knowledge.
• And more!

Set up a time management chart and resolutions list. A detailed time management chart and New Year’s resolution list make great references when starting out.

Weekly Routines and Time Management Strategies

There are 24 hours in each day and 168 hours in each week. Make time for a good night’s sleep. A good night’s sleep requires 7-9 hours each evening. Try to strive to get this much sleep, even though it’s not always possible.

Secondly, a typical workday will last between 8-9 hours five days a week – once again, for many busy professionals, this is not always the case – but do your best to adhere to a professional schedule so as not to completely detract from your life outside the office. Let’s say you account for eight hours of sleep each night and nine hours of work each day, which leaves 67 hours in any given week to factor in healthy habits to improve your life and make you a better version of yourself. Now let’s subtract another 10 hours a week to factor in commuting to and from work – that still leaves 57 hours a week. There are also things you can do to try and cut down on your commute. Ask your boss if you can work from home a day a week. See if you can circumvent peak traffic times by leaving before or after rush hour. If your job is quite far from your house or apartment, maybe a new personal or professional goal for how to manage your time more efficiently might be finding a job closer to home or locating a residence closer to your job. Easier said than done, but still something to think about. With a two-hour commute factored in for each day, you have 57 hours left to make your own.

But what about errands, groceries, meals, pet duties, your kids, and all the other obligations that a responsible adult needs to adhere to day after day? How can you find time for yourself to do all the things you want to do? You need to look at some of these tasks differently.

Minimize trips to the grocery store by creating a detailed shopping list that will cover your needs for a week or more. You can also look into meal delivery services as an option to cut down on time. Allow yourself no more than two hours a week to shop for groceries. 55 hours to go.

Some people like to meal prep for the week. While a great thing to strive for, it isn’t always easy to dedicate half a Sunday to prepare your weekly meals. Many people like a variety of things throughout the week and enjoy eating out too. First, don’t eat out too much; try to strive to cook a healthy meal at home around four times a week. If some weeks you can only do three home-cooked meals, don’t beat yourself up. Second, there are plenty of wonderful meals you can cook at home that don’t require hours of hard work – many delicious meals can be made in about 30 minutes. Don’t rush through the process of creating the food or the meal itself – enjoy the time. Preparing food and enjoying it with your loved ones or on your own can be meditative, healthy, and improve multiple facets of your life, including your relationships and health and fitness goals. Set a rule of no multimedia at the table – use meals to lessen the use of social media and television.

During the work-week, say you spend 30 minutes for breakfast, 45 minutes for lunch, and one to two hours for dinner – times that by five and you will get approximately 11 hours and 15 minutes on the low end and 16 hours and 15 minutes on the high end – so let’s smooth it out to about 13.5 hours per work-week on food prep and dining. On certain days you may take slightly shorter eating breaks or cut down on food prep time to factor in a workout or other activity you deem important. For the weekend, give yourself a bit more time to enjoy; an hour for breakfast, an hour for lunch, and one to two hours for dinner with family and friends. If you total a five-day work-week and two weekend days at these intervals, you are looking at approximately 20.5 hours per seven-day week for food prep and dining; giving you roughly 34.5 hours left to dedicate to other things that will improve your quality of life and get you closer to your professional and personal goals.

Of course, you must also dedicate time to cleanliness and morning and evening routines that include showering, brushing your teeth, shaving, picking out clothes, and ironing; an hour of prep each morning and 30 minutes of prep each evening comes to 10.5 hours each week. Subtract 10.5 hours from 34.5 hours, and you have 24 hours left. You may dedicate 30 minutes of additional chores each day of the work-week and 3.5 hours on the weekend (roughly 6 hours per week) – subtract 6 hours from 24, and you have 18 hours left.

Of the 18 hours you have left, use four hours each week for exercising and 3.5 hours to meditate, improve mental clarity, and de-stress without the use of multimedia devices. 18 hours – 4 hours – 3.5 hours, allots 10.5 hours a week – unwind with 30 minutes of a slightly-guilty pleasure each day – that gives you seven additional hours a week to try something new. This may not seem like a lot, but seven hours a week dedicated to learning a new skill will yield great results over time – you can even split the time to put forth more effort in building stronger relationships with your family, friends, and colleagues. There are also time management tools you can implement to gain more hours of free time each week.

Time Management Skills – Taking Time Back!

Now let’s see how you can add more time back. What can you do without, and what can you change? Try to carve time off your meal prep and even shopping (look into meal delivery services, for example). If you spend a half a day one weekend dedicated to chores, do less the following week. Try to figure out other ways to minimize housework; if you have the means to hire someone for specific tasks to open up more time, like housekeeping or landscaping, then do so. Take a half-hour lunch break a couple of days a week rather than 45 minutes or an hour. Cut down on your commute using some of the abovementioned suggestions. See if you can shave off enough time to open up 10 hours or more a week – it may seem tough, but it’s not impossible – with these hours, give time to enjoying your family and friends, achieving higher professional fulfillment by working smarter and not harder, increasing personal success by learning something new, fine-tuning your skills, and creating a new you through self-improvement and interpersonal development.

Remember, this breakdown is a rigorous approximation, try to shave even just a small amount of time from every obligation to open up time for professional and personal betterment. You deserve this time. You need this time.

Time Management Activities – Look at Things in a Different Way!

Another way to adjust your obligations is to look at them differently. We look at many of our day-to-day tasks as chores. Instead, we need to see how these tasks fall under the categories of professional and personal improvement, and if they don’t, we must adjust accordingly to ensure that they do. Tackle everything in your life by looking at each hour, including those least coveted hours, as a way to improve your life and yourself while bettering those around you. Learning how to manage time efficiently is essential, but don’t micromanage yourself; a good rule of thumb is to use 10 hours a week for the things that make you truly happy while finding a bit of happiness in every hour of the day. Make sure everything you do is working towards a goal, and achieving that goal will bring reward.

Time Management Chart

Look at the time management chart below to recap and learn how to improve time management on your own. See how you can shave time off your daily routines and add additional hours to fulfill your life goals!

Estimated hours based off a 168-hour week:

• Sleep (56 hours per week)
• Work (45 hours per week)
• Commute (10 hours per week)
• Meal prep and dining (20.5 hours per week)
• Morning and evening routines (10.5 hours per week)
• Additional chores (6 hours per week)
• Exercise (4 hours per week)
• Meditation (3.5 hours per week)
• (Slightly) guilty pleasure (5.25 hours per week)
• Additional family time (3.5 hours per week)
• Learning a new skill (3.5 hours per week)

Total: 167.75 hours

Remember, these are just approximated values – things like family time can be encompassed in more than one value. It is not the opinion of the writer or Brookhollow that 3.5 hours is enough time to maintain healthy relationships week-by-week, nor is it the opinion of our organization that these values are the direct way to building stronger professional and personal successes. The values and time management examples found in this time management article should be looked at as a jumping-off point, and you should work to revise and improve your weekly numbers to build a better you.

For more ways to improve your professional and personal goals, go to www.brookhollowcards.com.