Cet article a été précédemment publié sur le site Bobby Finance.
The New Year has arrived, with its lot of objectives and challenges. If you haven’t heard much from me these days it’s because I went through a terrible burnout and I eventually dropped everything to go on a three-week vacation in Cameroon. As a matter of fact, it has been weeks since I wrote my last article. Thankfully now I have a team of talented guest writers to ensure quality content on the blog on a consistent basis.
Since the blog redesign, I have been overwhelmed with positive feedback. People absolutely love the new site, and several opportunities have emerged since then. Now I write for several paper magazines (both in French and in English), and I frequently speak at events on various topics related to finance and economics. So I’m happy to say that life is treating me well. However I now face another big challenge: Figuring out how to manage my time!
As you may know, I work full-time as a risk manager for a bank, and I’m considering applying for an MBA (I’m still trying to figure out how I’m going to pay for that one!) and as you noticed, I recently launched my YouTube Channel. Since I’m probably not the only person facing time management issues, I decided to share with you the tips I will apply this year to get more organized. I hope this will help you as well.
- More Prioritizing, less multi-tasking: Unfortunately we can’t always do everything we want in 24 hours. Time is a constraint that is hard to beat. The only way to get around it is to prioritize the things to be done. Therefore, instead of starting several things at the same time with the risk of finishing none, I decided to choose one or two tasks every day, with the assurance of completing each of them.
- Set up deadlines: There is generally a deadline to everything we need to get done. So take the habit of setting up a timeline or a road map for your personal and professional projects. It really helped me in 2014, and I intent to do it again this year.
- Run a budget: How much will cost everything you want to accomplish? In my case, I will have to determine the total cost of doing an MBA, the cost of publishing more videos and the cost hosting my first Masterclass.
- Put the phone aside: The Smartphone may be the best but also the worst invention of the millennium. Indeed, it forces me to be constantly connected, and the urge to respond to every single notification is so high, that I end up being distracted all day long. Plus intrusive apps like Facebook messenger and Whatsapp make it difficult for me to focus. Therefore I decided to put the phone aside while I’m working or studying.
- Sleep more but wake up earlier: I believe one of the reasons I went through a burnout, was because I had poor resting habits. I could never fully empty my brain and just focus on sleeping. Strangely, it wasn’t uncommon for me to sleep for 10 hours and still wake up fatigued. Going to sleep very late was another factor. I thus decided to sleep earlier, but limit my resting time to a solid 8 hours.
- Hand down: I’m no superwoman, and I definitely cannot do everything on my own. Experience has thought me that when I have mastered a certain task, then it’s worth handing it down to other people. This includes extra projects at work, articles for the blog and speaking opportunities I can’t honour.
- Less social media and TV: As a blogger and a professional who constantly needs to be informed (and entertained!), I find TV and social media to be two of the most time-consuming activities in my life. These are two very passive activities that add very little value to my intellect. I thus decided to cut my consumption by half. We’ll see how that goes.
- More exercise: I generally spend my days seated at my office. The human being was not meant for such immobility. As a result, in the absence of physical activity, we tend to develop more muscle atrophy, chronic pains and we gain weight more easily. I thus decided to increase my physical activity from 3 to 4 times per week. I also believe it will help me regulate my sleeping and eating habits.
That’s it for me! I will make sure to update you on my progress during the year. Please share with me your own tips to get more organized this year. I will be glad to hear from you!
