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How To Master Your Time Before The Time Masters You

Peter Kolat
3 min read

time2Today I am going to share something with you that can literally change your life.  This little technique will give you the power to master your own business and your own life.  You need to master this technique if you want  to be successful in life.  What am I talking about here?  I’m talking about Effective Time Management.  Without it, you’re just spinning your wheels and get nothing done.  Without it, you’ll look back at your own day and say:  “What happen?  Where did the day go? I didn’t get anything done!

If you look on the internet and type in time management in Google, there are thousands of different ways to manage your time.  I will show you one technique that I use in my own life and my own business.  You can use that technique or you can use something else but this technique has proved to be most effective for me.

First of all, I have to give credit where it’s due.  I learned this from Alex Mondossian, an internet marketer and an old school copywriter whose been famous for a long time—his name was Eugene Schwartz.  By the way, if you want to learn effective copywriting, Eugene Schwartz books and swipe files are amazing.  So check them out.

Here’s the simple time management technique:

Step 1 – Create your master to do list.  Your master to do list is going to have to have all of the items you have to finish the next day.  You can use a notebook or 5″x7″ index cards.  So, if you are writing your master to do list on Sunday, you are focusing on your to-do list for Monday.  Don’t write more than 20 items though.  When you complete an item, cross it out with a RED pen.  Believe me, it works.  It’s a psychological thing.  One tip I learned is to do couple of fun items first. Not only does it get you going but it gets you excited about your list and your day.

Step 2 – You are going to blackout your daily prime time hours.  Now you may be a morning person or night person.  I am a night person and tend to sleep in the morning, so my prime time hours are late afternoon (after I get up) or later at night because everyone is away and I can focus on what I am doing.  I would suggest that you should keep your prime time hours between 1-4 hours.  These prime time hours are going to be your focus hours on items that are critical to your business and your profits.  Focus on those items and avoid interruptions.  Turn off your phone, close your office door and whatever else interrupts you during the day.

Step 3 – You are going to use a countdown timer during your prime time hours.  It can be any kind of timer as long as it counts down.  You will set your prime time hours to 50 or 55 minutes. Mr. Schwartz was teaching about 3 minutes and 33 seconds or 33 minutes and 33 seconds.  He would set his clock for that amount of time. Play around with the time and see which one works better for you.  At first, you might start with 33 minutes and 33 seconds because you might not be used to focusing for so long.  Then, as you get better, you can ramp it up to 55 minutes. So, you turn the timer on and start working.

Let’s say you want to write an article for marketing purposes but you have no clue as to what to write about. Turn on the timer that you set for 33 or 55 minutes and sit there in front of that paper.  If you can’t think of anything that is fine just start writing crazy stuff down and sooner or later something will come to you.  Here is a critical point you need to remember, after your time expires and your timer beeps you need to stop.  Step away from the desk put your pen down and go do something for about 5 or 10 minutes.  It doesn’t matter if you are in a middle of something or that you have finally started writing.  You need to do this step.  It’s extremely critical you do.  Here’s where the magic happens.  Your mind will start working on what you have been doing and will start creating ideas for you.  You can be getting a drink or walking around your office.  It doesn’t matter, your mind will do it’s job.

That’s it.  Just rinse and repeat.  After a while, you’ll be amazed how much work you’ll get done and how effective you’ll become.  Believe me, I’ve seen this technique work and it is amazing.  So go out there and start doing it, today!

One last thing, let me know in the comments below about your thoughts on this.  Have you used this technique?  What do you think about it?  Maybe you have some really good tips you can share with others on this blog.  Thanks again and I’ll talk to you soon.

To Your Success,

Peter Kolat

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.