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Time management is one thing you will hear over and over again throughout your working life. It is impossible to be perfect at it, but making good time management a habit will bring unexpected and amazing results, which will continue to bring dividends throughout your life.

Time management was never my strong suit, but adapting into most of the actions I perform on a daily basis as a habit has not only improved my performance, but I am able to maintain my motivation even when things are not travelling at 1000 miles per hour – and this is key. Being able to squeeze every ounce out of downtime, even if it’s 15 or 20 minutes here and there. This is the difference between being busy and being successfully busy.

One technique that I have utilised comes directly from Steven R Covey and his book First Things First. It details 4 quadrants of effective time management and then assigning a specific task or goal into one of the quadrants to be managed;

• Important, Urgent (Necessity) - Manage these tasks in the best of your ability.

• Important Not urgent (Quality and Personal Leadership) - These are the items you want to spend most of your time on.

• Not Important, Urgent (Deception) - These tasks appear to be important but in reality are not. Be careful here.

• Not Important, Not Urgent (Waste) - Avoid these tasks as much as possible

Sounds very simple right? It is – however applying it and internalizing it is the difficult part. Make this a habit, accept the responsibility to control your success and start doing.