This month, the focus has been on getting organised so that you can be better equipped to accomplish your goals. If you study the habits of successful people, you will recognise that they all learned how to effectively organise and control their resources to achieve great things.

One of the most important skills that will be required for goal attainment is time management. Your plans for your future will not be realised unless you have a proper time utilisation strategy to carry out the necessary tasks. One way to accomplish this objective is to create a time budget.

Design a schedule for your time

To budget your time, you should first design a timetable that lists blocks of time on the left-hand side in half-hour increments, and the seven days of the week along the top of the page. To make this process easier, you can simply download a time budget spreadsheet on www.financiallysmart.org.

Then, think of all the tasks that you need to or would like to accomplish over the course of a week, and slot them into your timetable. A time budget is different from the appointment schedule that you may use for work, as it should include every single activity that you carry out during a 24-hour day.

For example, your time budget would have segments for sleeping, eating, getting dressed, travelling to work, doing the laundry, watching television and other mundane or pleasurable pursuits. The idea is to allocate the entire 168 hours you have at your disposal over the week into specific tasks.

Manage your money with a budget

Initially, you may think that blocking your time may be an impractical attempt at regimenting your life, or taking you into obsessive-compulsive behaviour. However, upon deeper reflection, you will realise that making a time budget is exactly like preparing a detailed spending plan for your money.

To create a proper money budget, you need to consider all the expenses that you may encounter over a year, calculate their average monthly costs, and then apportion your income across your bills. It helps you to be aware of all your spending needs and make appropriate choices with your money.

Your budget may indicate that you have insufficient income to satisfy all your requirements. You can either cut back on non-essential expenses, or try to earn more money to meet your additional demands. Therefore, a money budget is a vital planning tool to effectively manage this resource.

Control your time with a budget

Similarly, your time budget will allow you to assess all the demands on your time, and decide how to allocate them across your available time. It forces you to consider how much time will be required to get a particular task done, and whether you are spending too much time on unimportant activities.

The time budget will not only help you to apportion hours to satisfy your everyday needs, it will help you to find time to accomplish your major goals. For example, if you want to do internet marketing to promote your side business, you can quickly identify the best time each week to carry out this task.

When you monitor your expenses with a money budget, you will see when costs are going up or if you’ve overspent, and you can make spending adjustments to get back on target. A time budget also helps you to keep track of your activities, and alter your schedule to complete key tasks.

Recognise that time is priceless

Just like a money budget, you will always have more demands on your time than you have at your disposal. However, unlike income, you cannot create more hours to satisfy your requirements. The only solution is for you to become more efficient and organised with the use of your time.

A time budget can help you to see the negative effect that wasting just 30 minutes occasionally can have on all the other activities in your day. When you are trying to achieve important goals, you can’t afford to fritter away your time, as it will delay or completely destroy your plans for the future.

If you had thousands of dollars in your possession, would you carelessly let the bills fall out of your pocket or handbag? Would you deliberately throw them out the window or burn them? When you spend time unproductively, it’s worse than destroying your money, as you can never recover your time.

Take charge of your present and future

If you often feel aimless and confused, or rushed and pressured, then these are signs that you might not be effectively managing your time. Preparing a money budget can remove financial stress, and a time budget can relieve the anxiety that comes from unfinished tasks and unfulfilled objectives.

As you regain control over the minutes and hours in your day, you will be better able to take charge of your financial future. You can plan exactly what you need to do to accomplish your goals, and schedule the time necessary to complete the steps required for success.

Copyright © 2013 Cherryl Hanson Simpson. No reproduction without written consent.

Originally published in The Daily Observer, June 20, 2013

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Cherryl is a money coach and business mentor, and founder of Financially S.M.A.R.T. Services. See more of her work at www.entrepreneursinjamaica.com and www.financiallysmart.org. Contact Cherryl