Time management skills are essential because few, if any, of us ever have enough time to do everything that is asked of us, or that we want to do. It may be better to think about time management as a combination of working productively and prioritising your time. In other words, people who are good at time management are good at getting on and doing things. They are also, however, better at prioritising , and working out what really needs doing—and then discarding the other things.
They can do this because they understand the difference between urgent and important. Answering the phone is urgent. It may also, however, be an automated voice telling you that you may be eligible for compensation for having been mis-sold insurance. If you leave it too long, however, it may become urgent because you may get toothache. Picking your children up from school is both urgent and important. If you are not there at the right time, they will be waiting in the playground or the classroom, worrying about where you are.
You may also inconvenience others such as teachers who are waiting with your children for you to arrive. Reading funny emails or checking Facebook is neither urgent nor important. So why is it the first thing that you do each day? See our page minimising distractions to help you recognise and avoid other things that may distract you from getting your urgent and important tasks done. This distinction between urgent and important is the key to prioritising your time and your workload, whether at work, at home or when studying.
It enables you to work out what to do first, and what can be left either until later, or not done at all. For example, if you leave an urgent but unimportant task, you may find that it becomes unnecessary. Using a grid like the priority matrix below can help you to organise your tasks into their appropriate categories:.
To use the priority matrix, it is best to review your tasks on a daily basis. Each day, ask yourself:. Now use the answers to these questions to allocate your tasks to the boxes in the priority matrix, following these rules:. Next, look at the less urgent but still important tasks.
Decide what you are going to do about them, and then schedule time into your diary to do them, or consider delegating them to someone else. Finally, do the work. When you finish it, move onto the scheduled work or tasks. If there are more tasks that you can manage in any quadrant, it is time to a do some, b delegate some or c eliminate some. Regular pruning of your matrix in this way will ensure that you can focus on what really matters, and keep work flowing. Only you can decide what you really think is important or urgent.
Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Small Business Management. Table of Contents Expand. Table of Contents. Time Management Is a Myth.
Find Where You Waste Time. Create Time Management Goals. Implement a Plan. Use Time Management Tools. Prioritize Ruthlessly. Establish Routines. Set Time Limits for Tasks. Organize Your Systems. Don't Waste Time Waiting. A Bonus Tip. By Susan Ward. She has run an IT consulting firm and designed and presented courses on how to promote small businesses.
If you think you're trying to accomplish too much, try creating an Eisenhower matrix or using the 4 Ds of time management: Do, Defer, Delegate and Delete. Both methods help prioritize by having you put your tasks into one of 4 groups:. Using these methodologies will help you determine what tasks you should prioritize and what tasks you should schedule and plan for, delegate, or delete.
This can be made in either the first block of your workday or the last few minutes. Use either of those chunks of time to create a daily to-do list. When you're creating your to-do list, make sure to keep it simple. Seeing a half-done lists day after day can be disheartening. It's better to under promise and overdeliver, even when it comes to personal productivity.
Word your list items as if you've already completed them. Walking into your workweek with a plan will help you focus on your top priorities. It also eases the transition from the carefree weekend mindset to a productive Monday morning "work brain. Take a few minutes on Sunday to create a plan for your whole week. Increase your chances of success by breaking down your weekly goals into daily tasks.
That way you'll be able to see what you need to do every day at a glance. Set yourself up for success by scheduling low-priority tasks for Fridays and other low-energy times. Remember, your energy and creativity levels fluctuate throughout the week.
Complete creative and demanding tasks on Tuesday and Wednesday. Schedule meetings for Thursday, when your team's energy starts to decline. Use your Fridays and Mondays for planning and networking. There are hundreds of diverse approaches to personal productivity. We know that everyone works differently, which is why a trial and error approach to these time management strategies can help you find the best method for you. For most people, the first few hours of work are the most productive.
Oddly enough, you can focus more easily when your brain isn't fully awake. Booting-up brains have less excess energy for daydreaming and worrying about other tasks. Use this to your advantage and take on your most mentally demanding tasks first thing after waking up.
Take advantage of this knowledge and find out what that activities are a part of that 20 percent. For example, say you're an agency owner looking for clients. You spend 30 minutes a day emailing potential clients and 1 hour messaging and maintaining the businesses social media account. Only 1 client was referred to you by social media, whereas you have 5 clients were gained through email. It's clear that you should shift your time to email outreach if you want to maximize your clients.
Anyone can use the rule to find out where to spend their time. Do you know what time of the day you do your most productive work? Knowing this will help you optimize your workload. To find your golden hours or biological prime time, break your workday into time slots. Keep track of your productivity for the week using a notebook or free time tracking tool. At the end of the week, rank these time spots from most to least productive. After you've found your golden hours you'll be able to plan out your weeks accordingly.
Schedule difficult or highly involved tasks for peak productivity times. It's easy to feel overwhelmed by large tasks. When you don't know where to start, overwhelm can lead to procrastination or loss of focus. The Swiss cheese method, coined by Alan Lakein, argues that the best way to overcome this is to break down larger projects into either smaller tasks or time chunks.
By completing a single, small task or a minute time block, you'll make the project less daunting and more likely to be finished on time. We all could use a little boost from time to time. Use these small tips and tricks to add a little extra oomph to your productivity strategy or method. Tasks expand to fill the time they're given, or so argues Parkinson's law. If you give a task two hours rather than one, the amount of work you need to do to accomplish the task will simply expand to fill the full two hours.
Take another look at your time audit and identify tasks that took longer than you expected. Set a time constraint on those tasks. By setting constraints you will improve your focus and work more efficiently. You will also avoid scope creep: the expansion of a project that occurs when duties are not well-defined or controlled. If you still find yourself going beyond these time limits, examine your workflow and determine if you should assign more time to those tasks in the future.
You can also try eliminating little time-wasters like unscheduled breaks. No matter how well you plan, unexpected tasks will always pop up during the day. Jot them down in a separate list next to your to-dos for some extra satisfaction at the end of the day.
On Sunday, revisit your accomplishments from the previous week and congratulate yourself on your successes. This review period will increase your confidence and help you create the next week's schedule. Many people believe they work best under the intense pressure of a deadline and will put off work until the day before it's due.
However, for most this isn't actually the case. Projects often take more time than initially thought making it difficult to actually complete projects on time. Set an earlier deadline for yourself and stick to it. Plan to submit your work one-day ahead of schedule.
Don't automatically answer email or Slack messages the very second they arrive. Batch process your emails and catch up on phone calls in your downtime. Close email or messaging apps to avoid interruptions when working on high-focus tasks. Although necessary and important, meetings are a well known time sink.
Everyone has been in a Zoom call that went on way longer than needed. To ensure productive and timely meetings, make sure there is a clear purposed in mind before the meeting. Make an agenda and share it with meeting participants in advance. You and your team will waste less time and get back to work as sooner.
During both waking and resting hours, the human brain goes through basic rest-activity cycles or BRAC for short. The brain cycles between higher and lower alertness every 90 minutes.
After working at high intensity for more than 90 minutes, we begin to draw on emergency reserves of energy to keep us going. Scheduling a break at least every 90 minutes can help you maintain focus and keep your productivity high throughout the day. It happens to everyone: we wait in lines, waiting rooms, airport terminals, train stations, etc. Alternatively, you can carry a book or e-reader with you and squeeze in some reading time.
Even if the book isn't directly related to work, reading helps boost concentration and improves brain connectivity. Need a little extra help. These time management tools are your new best productivity pals. Use your computer and phone's "do not disturb" functions when working on focused tasks. Tools like Self Control or Freedom can be used to block distracting websites. Use these to block distracting websites like social media or news sites. The best way to manage your time is to know where your time is going in the first place.
Time management apps will allow you to monitor your progress and figure out your procrastination patters. Starting a timer can help increase your focus and works as a signal to your brain to switch into work mode. We would recommend the free application Toggl Track , which is easy to use and available on most devices. It also offers comprehensive reporting so you can easily see your procrastination patterns.
There are also many paid time tracking applications available such as Clockify , Harvest , or Time Doctor. Channel your attention by working at only one monitor and opening only one window.
Going offline might also be an option, but let's not go that far.
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