Bill Gates, co-founder of the multinational technology corporation, Microsoft is one of the most successful men in business. He is undoubtedly a busy man with many responsibilities, which makes his time even more precious. Here are 5 Pieces Of Advice From Bill Gates On Time Management.
Structure Your Time
Bill Gates breaks down his tasks into small chunks, sometimes as small as five-minute increments. This may be effective for him as a man who sometimes must stop his tasks to shake hands with an important person, to the more mundane people, it is a lesson that time must be structured.
A method that successful people such as Bill Gates use in his scheduling is timeboxing, where you set aside certain periods of time to complete certain tasks. Examples of this are setting aside an hour to reply to emails and completing the tasks early means that the time saved can be used to rest.
Don’t Waste Time To Make More Time
This might be confusing at first, but this basically refers to the fact that one should not waste time not doing tasks and making more time by staying up late in hopes of completing said unfinished task. Time wasted cannot be made up for, no matter how many more hours you stay up for, that time could have been used productively instead.
Bill Gates, even as the busy man that he is, still has time for his family despite his packed schedule. This is because he ensures that his waking hours are used effectively to free up time for other personal ventures such as family.
Get Enough Sleep
It may surprise you, but most successful people get sufficient sleep each night, ranging from six to eight hours. This is because they understand the importance that a night of good sleep can have on productivity during the day.
Bill Gates is one of them, being that he aims for seven hours of sleep each day, going to sleep by midnight and waking up at seven in the morning. This shows the importance of sleep as even a busy man like Bill Gates tries for sufficient sleep.
Although it may be tempting to stay up and complete more work, sleep is an important way of extending the time that you have. This is as getting enough sleep allows you to be more focused during the day, which can allow you to work longer hours and be more productive in your waking hours.
Use Snippets Of Time
Bill Gates has stated in multiple interviews that he always has a book on hand to read whenever he has extra minutes. This shows that he values the extra snippets of time that normally go to waste, such as waiting in line, for a bus, etc.
These short snippets of time can be put to far better use than using social media for frivolous means or playing a level on a mobile game. These minutes are still time out of your day that could be used productively and should be treated as such.
Taking mindless breaks can do wonders for your productivity. However, using the time for distracting activities may end up costing you more time.
Prioritize Your Time
There can never be enough time in life to do everything that you want, that is why it is important to prioritize what is important to you. Bill Gates has claimed that his emails are filtered by his team and still he gets about one hundred every day, which forces him to prioritize responding to what he deems most important.
You are the only person that can choose the tasks that you work on with your time each day. It is up to you to manage your own schedule and not being able to do something because many things came up is a weak excuse that people are unable to prioritize does.