Welcome back to the 41st episode of the Thursday Meditations show!

This is the show that helps you overcome average, and step up above mediocrity.

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May is all about time.

Today is the first part of a 2 part episode. Today we talk about Top Time Management Skills, and next week we talk about how to develop them.

First let me tell a little story.

You go to work and, and work takes longer than you wished, but like it so don’t mind. You come home and your significant other is upset at you coming home so late. This happens often. After coming up with some lame excuse, you both decide to get take-out instead of cooking a meal, because they were also busy today. If you do have any kids, you say hello to them, not creating any deep meaningful conversation, just staying surface level. At the end of the night you stay awake to work on a side hustle. You think that maybe if you could make some extra money, it would all be easier. You go to sleep no closer to your goals than before, waking up for another day.

That is the cautionary tale of not being good at time management.

To avoid that, here are the top skills you need to develop.

1. Prioritization
2. Priority means the only important thing. So many of us get caught checking email, that we neglect the most important things. Sometimes we spend undue amounts of time at work, taking our eyes off our families, or the most important thing.
3. Strategic Thinking
4. We might view ourselves as firefighters, running into burning buildings pulling people out, extinguishing the fire, preserving other buildings. We wear that hat only occasionally. Other times, we must be scientists and architects, creating buildings that don’t burn. This is the ability to put tomorrow’s problems in front of today’s problems occasionally.
5. Focus
6. You have to be able to hone in on what you are trying to accomplish. It doesn’t matter how much time you have if you spend it trying to do 10 things without finishing any of them. Focus means diving in, shaking things up, and finishing the most important thing, rather than getting halfway on 10 other things. This is what Cal Newport means when he talks about Deep Work.
7. Communication
8. Your time is not always your own. Often, we’ve pledged our time to other entities that require us to fulfill that commitment. 
9. Hard Work
10. Time management only works if you work. This is probably a duh… but I mention it...