Only recently I gained the insight that you cannot ‘manage’ time. You can only manage yourself. Of course we know all about to-do lists and setting priorities, and then changing those priorities. Changing the position of your to-do items only swaps position 1 with position 4. Though changing priorities can be useful, it does not give you ‘more’ time.

So what does give you more time? Learning to say ‘no’ does. Really thinking about whether or not the things on your to-do list are worth doing alltogether, is a great first step. Think about the importance and urgency of what you are going to do next and act accordingly. The grid from SkillsYouNeed.com below can help.

Be prepared to be confronted by all the things you do during your day that fall in the category of low urgency and low importance. Be honest to yourself about this! It can be a kick in the nuts, but that’s only because you badly needed it.

So learn to say ‘no’ to doing things that don’t really matter to achieving your goals. You will be far happier anyway when achieving your goal then when you would be checking your Facebook.