There are many reasons for wanting to have more time. You might want to make more money, spend more time with your family, have more time for recreation or you just feel as though there aren't enough hours in the day to get everything done.

You're not alone!

Most people feel this way. You may feel that learning to manage time will be like a magic wand to help you get all of the things that you want. It can be that way, but unfortunately there's a dirty little secret when it comes to effective time management. You can't manage time and no one else can either. Everyone has exactly the same amount of time, every single day. Sleeping less isn't the answer either.

If you are truly seeking time management skills then you need to understand one very important thing: time itself cannot be managed.

The good news is you can learn to manage yourself and that's what time management really means. Any time you hear the word time management, simply understand it's about you, managing yourself. Before you think of this like some sort of self-imprisonment try to view effective time management as the ultimate source of freedom. When you learn what you want and learn how to focus some of your energy on taking regular action towards achieving it, you will actually see the results in your life. You will be able to get the things that you want and this is ultimately what time management is all about.

Your interest shouldn't be about how to squeeze out every ounce of your energy for your employer. Your focus should be on how to be productive in the hours that your employer pays you for, as well as how to be productive in your own life. In this balance you can have the things that you want.

Learning how to manage yourself better, you can live a balanced life and truly have it all. Consider this: if you had one major goal defined for this year a scheduled one hour of your day to work towards that goal, every day, you would still have 23 hours for everything else. At the end of the year, you have 365 hours towards that goal!

Are you important enough to set aside one hour a day for your goal?

It's true that it's not always that easy. If you haven't practiced these basic time management skills, they are not going to feel comfortable for you at first. Over time they will.

It's important to learn a simple system that you can apply to make time management easy. Once you have that simple system, apply it every day. Even if it's only a little bit at first, each day it will get easier and easier until it becomes a good habit that yields good things for you. This is just like riding a bike. The first time you rode a bike you didn't have very good balance, you weren't able to go very fast and you were probably very nervous the entire time. The more you rode that bike, the better you got. Managing yourself (the essence of time management) is the same. Take it one step at a time and eventually you will be a time management master. You'll be amazed at all of the things that you can do.

Dave Saunders is a national speaker and published author on personal performance. Make more money, spend more time with your family and have time for yourself too. You can have it all when you learn how to master your time at http://www.the-time-management-guy.com.

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