1. Find something to enjoy in whatever you do.
2. Don’t waste a single moment on regretting failures and instead learn from your mistakes.
3. Get the most important task done as soon in the day as you can.
4. Try to identify your bad habits and search for ways to change them.
5. Revise your lifetime goals on a regular basis and follow your progress towards those goals daily.
6. Look ahead in time and try to anticipate what is going to happen so you can better avoid crises.
7. Reward yourself when you get important things done.
8. Catch yourself when you are involved in unproductive projects and stop as soon as you can.
9. Always try to do one thing at a time.
10. Delegate whenever possible, even if it seems to take more time than doing the task yourself.

Even now - I’m writing this post while I should be working on a bunch of other things. But hopefully, when I’m finished, I still feel a lot better, because I’ve completed a really important article. Procrastination is one of the biggest time leaks and should be dealt with wisely.

1. Focus on starting the task, rather than finishing it.
   Once you have started, you suddenly get a lot more motivated once you see some light at the end of the tunnel. 
2. Break a big project down into shorter tasks.
   
3. Divide a task over a longer period of time.
   Do a small portion of your unpleasant task every morning for a few days in a row. 
4. Do the unpleasant task the first thing in the day.
   It’s like eating a frog - the longer you stare at it, the harder it is to eat it. Once you’re done, the rest of the day seems like a dream. 
5. Find someone else to do your task. 
6. Clarify your goals.
   Sometimes you’re just not sure if the thing you’re doing really needs to be done.
7. Stay focused.
   
8. Reward yourself at the conclusion of the task.
   Once your lazy half knows what’s coming it’s easier to convince the other one.
9. Change your environment.
   Go outside or sit in a cafe to get your unpleasant task done. 
10. Bore yourself. 
    Do something that is boring as hell. After this even the most routine task seems interesting. 

This is a video preview of Big Rocks, a video featured in The 7 Habits workshops. This classic video helps participants grasp a clear understanding of “big rocks” as they watch Stephen R. Covey teach in a live workshop setting.

It’s quite surprising to see, that most of these thoughts are very old.

• They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.
  Andy Warhol
• I am definitely going to take a course on time management… just as soon as I can work it into my schedule.
  Louis E. Boone

• Time you enjoyed wasting is not wasted time.
  T. S. Elliot
  
• To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing. 
  Eva Young
• The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.
  Rabindranath Tagore
• In truth, people can generally make time for what they choose to do; it is not really the time but the will that is lacking.
  Sir John Lubbock
• It is an undoubted truth, that the less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in.
  Earl of Chesterfield
• It takes less time to do things right that to explain why you did it wrong.
  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?
  Henry David Thoreau
• It’s not so much how busy you are, but why you are busy. The bee is praised. The mosquito is swatted.
  Mary O’Connor
• Just as you began to feel that you could make good use of time, there was no time left to you.
  Lisa Alther
• Many of us spend half our time wishing for things we could have if we didn’t spend half our time wishing.
  Alexander Woollcott
• Those who make the worse use of their time are the first to complain of its shortness.
  Jean De La Bruyere
• Time is a circus, always packing up and moving away.
  Ben Hecht
• Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.
  Dr. Laura Schlessinger
• The great dividing line between success and failure can be expressed in five words; “I did not have time”.
  Franklin Field
• If you haven’t got the time to do it right, when will you find the time to do it over?
  Jeffery J. Mayer

• The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities. 
• The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. 
• Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out. 
• Actually I did not invent the seven habits, they are universal principles and most of what I wrote about is just common sense. I am embarrassed when people talk about the Covey Habits, and dislike the idea of being some sort of guru.
 
• The challenge is not to manage time, but to manage ourselves.
• The environment you fashion out of your thoughts, your beliefs, your ideals, your philosophy is the only climate you will ever live in. The key is in not spending time, but in investing it.
• Live out of your imagination, not your history. 
• Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall. 
• You can’t talk your way out of what you’ve behaved yourself into.
• We are not animals. We are not a product of what has happened to us in our past. We have the power of choice. 
• There are three constants in life - change, choice and principles.

In order to achieve more we are tempted to work more hours and run faster. However, productivity is not about squeezing more work into your days. It’s about getting more IMPORTANT things done faster and spending the time saved with your family and things that really matter.

Let’s look at the biggest leaks that are sucking up our time when we’re not watching.

1. Starting something before thinking it through. 
   It is proven, that every 15 minutes spent on planning will save you 1-2 hours later on. 
2. Misplacing things.
   Keep your files, your desk and your car organized.
3. Ineffective meetings.
   Weekly meetings with too many people and no real agenda, meetings instead of short phone calls, meetings instead of using email.
4. Excess usage of e-mail.
   Use filters and auto-replies, turn off notifications from sites such as Facebook, mailing lists with far too much traffic;
5. Excess socializing. 
   Set a limit to everyday small talk, both real-life and virtual.
6. Failing to avoid interruptions.
   Block out quiet periods of personal time to work on your most important tasks. 
7. Failing to deal with procrastination.
   If a task is too overwhelming to handle, break it up into many smaller tasks. Or use the 10-minute rule to work on it for only 10 minutes. This gets you going.
8. Delegating tasks, not responsibilities. 
   When delegating work, give the person a whole project to handle. Reward the outcome accordingly.
9. Saying yes when we could say no. 
   When someone asks you to do something that you don’t want to or have time to do, just say so. 
10. Working on “small potatoes”.
    Often something small and irrelevant might seem important and interesting. Watch out for things like that.

Once you have plugged those time leaks it’s a lot easier to see new ones. And there’s a lot more of them to plug once you learn how to discover them.

There is a huge amount of time saving tips available and hundreds of books have been published on the subject. I have selected the top 10 easiest ones of these to implement. I feel they have really helped me to achieve success in business and balance in life.

Here they are:

1. Planning is key.
   Don’t be afraid to spend time on detailed planning. It is proven, that every 15 minutes spent on planning will save you 1-2 hours later on. Write down your tasks daily.
2. Log your activities.
   Keep a log of your activities and know where your time is going. This helps you discover time leaks and realize how much time you waste each day.
3. Plan only a part of your working day.
   Don’t plan more than about 60 percent  of your working time. There’s a big chance of burning out, when you plan 100 percent of your day, because you will always have unscheduled phone calls, things you have forgotten and unexpected developments.
4. Set a time range for every task.
   When you plan your next actions, estimate the time you are going to spend on every task and write it down. If the duration seems to be too long, split the task.
5. Handle meetings wisely.
   Knowingly decrease the number of meetings and their duration.  Avoid meetings with too many attendees. If you still have to have the meeting, ask everyone to be standing during the whole meeting. The results will show a lot faster.
6. Control your e-mail and Internet usage.
   Turn off automatic receiving of e-mails and deactivate all periodic notifications.
7. Learn to Say “No”. 
   When someone asks you to do something that you don’t want to or have time to do, just say so.
8. Use blocks of quiet time.
   Block a regular quiet time in your calendar and find a quiet place to avoid distractions. That’s the time you’ll be working on the most important things in your career.
9. Music helps to concentrate.
   To avoid distractions in an open office, put on your headphones and listen to some music. But keep in mind - instrumental music is best for this, because the frequency of human voice and listening to song lyrics can both be sources for even bigger distractions.
10. Do similar activities together.
    Combine several tasks that need the same tools or things to be done in the same location.

Use the time you save to plan your next projects even better. Take time to consider your goals in work and your whole life.

And then finally do something you can be proud of. It’s about time.

David Allen, author of “Getting Things Done,” one of the best-selling productivity books of all times joins Robert Scoble to talk about the future of work and how to make the most of productivity while minimizing stress.

Duration: 30:15

In this clip, Brian reminds us how time efficiency can make all the difference in the world when creating a successful business. Finding these clips helpful?

Duration: 3:15