Practicing Effective Time Management to Boost Your Productivity
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Everyone has the same amount of time each day, but some people achieve more in 24 hours than others. The only difference between super-productive individuals and those who feel like they are playing catch-up on projects is effective time management. The good news is that time management is a skill you can develop, implement, and sharpen with tools and resources.
What Is Time Management?
Time management is the act of consciously planning and managing your time on tasks to increase efficiency. To improve your productivity, you may implement deadlines, create to-do lists, and set micro-rewards for achieving specific goals and tasks.
At the center of effective time management is motivation. Managing your time and boosting productivity involves cultivating and maintaining good habits, removing distractions, and encouraging yourself to live a healthy, productive, and balanced life.
The Tools are There for You
Think about it: time is actually your most precious commodity. We only get a finite number of days and what you do with that time helps you to build your legacy! Now, effective time management does not mean skipping sleep or other necessary things we need to do. What it means is making more productive use of your time, whether it be at work or at home. By managing your time more effectively, you will be a more productive and efficient worker.
Some of the benefits of effective time management include greater productivity, less stress, increased performance, fewer mistakes, and higher quality of work. And as an added benefit, the tools we’ll discuss in this blog can apply not only to your work but also to your home life.
So, let’s take a look at some steps you can take to make more productive use of your time.
7 Time Management Strategies to Boost Your Performance
Some time management tips that can help you boost your productivity and efficiency include:
1. Identify Your Time Wasters
Before you can learn to manage your time properly, it helps to understand what your biggest time wasters are. Studies have found that for most people, their biggest time wasters are:
How much time do you spend on social media/your phone?
How often do you check your emails?
Are you planning your day?
Are you allocating time to each of your tasks?
Have you allotted enough time for critical tasks?
Reacting instead of acting
Lack of preparation
Procrastination
Getting lost in “the weeds”
Not having clear goals
Indecision
Poor organization
Rushing
Poor planning, reactive work, distractions, unclear goals, procrastination, and unstructured working habits are the biggest time wasters.
Take a moment and think about if any of these ring true for you. Now let’s take a look at how we can combat these.
2. Set Clear Goals
To prioritize your time effectively, you need to start with clear goals. Much time is wasted when effort is spent on activities that don’t directly relate to achieving desired goals. Where do these goals come from? From a work perspective, keep your eyes on the company’s mission, vision, and values, as well as their core values and guiding principles. Prioritize your time effectively by setting daily, monthly, and quarterly goals. Most of your activities should help your organization achieve bottom-line results.
For example, let’s take a look at the short and sweet mission statement of LinkedIn: “To connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.” That’s a broad goal, but it helps guide what all LinkedIn employees need to be focused on. Each employee needs to have more detailed, tailored goals that support the work they do, but all should contribute towards the main goal.
If you find what you’re working on does not accomplish your specific goals that have the broader goal in mind, then you’ll need to change your focus. Break down larger goals into smaller, manageable items you can schedule in your daily to-do list. Keep your goals specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-sensitive. Realize that goals may need constant adjustment and reprioritization as the needs of the company change. Flexibility and focus are the key to successful goals.
3. Have a Clear Plan
The importance of planning cannot be underestimated in managing your time. This can be as simple as taking a few minutes at the beginning of each day or each week to document what needs to get done and when. During this planning time, note what meetings you have and plan time for them.
Be sure you have the resources and tools you need to get your tasks done, and assign each task a priority level, such as A, B, or C, depending on the importance. Remember flexibility is key and things may need to shift, but in general, be sure to tackle your “A” tasks first, then “B” and “C,” if there’s time. Anything left over at the end of your day gets changed to an “A” for the next day. Taking this time to plan will save you loads of time in the long run.
4. Make Quick Informed Decisions
Making timely — not hasty — decisions helps you save time. Gather all the information you need, get inputs from trusted colleagues, and then decide how to move projects forward.
5. Prioritize Your Work According to Your Prime Time
Allocate your tasks to your natural energy flow, whether you are a morning person or a night owl. Maybe your best in-the-zone work is before lunch, or you hit your stride in the evenings. Focus on your intensive tasks during your prime time.
6. Avoid Procrastination
Procrastination often results from feeling overwhelmed about a project. To combat delaying work:
Break tasks into manageable chunks.
Start small to get going.
Set timers.
Reward yourself for completing micro-tasks.
7. Manage Interruptions Effectively
Interruptions happen. Managing these interruptions is vital so that they don’t disrupt your flow. Allocate time for asking or answering questions, reading your emails, and taking calls. If something is not essential and urgent, work on it after you’ve completed your task.
Additional Time Management Tips
Prime Time is Really a Thing
You may have heard jokes (or even been the brunt of some yourself) about not being a morning person or not being able to stay up late at night. The fact is we all have an internal clock that is built into our DNA. Some of us are naturally more productive during the early morning hours —we open our eyes and are ready to go – yet come 5 pm, we’re ready to wind down. Others have difficulty waking up in the morning and take longer to get moving – but are ready to roll in the later afternoon and evening hours.
The point is you don’t necessarily need to fight with yourself. Rather, take advantage of your “prime time!” If you know you’re more productive in the morning, plan that time. Get into work early before anyone else arrives and use that time to be the most productive. Likewise, plan less-intensive tasks later in the day when you’re not at your peak. And plan the opposite if you’re not a morning person: use that afternoon/evening time to put your nose to the grindstone.
Don’t be a “Pro” at Procrastination
Our next time management tip most people tend to struggle with, especially with projects that are very difficult, long, or just something that isn’t enjoyable to work on: it’s avoiding procrastination. Our instinct is to put off what we can’t or don’t want to do. It works the same way as instant gratification: we tend to want the happy feelings instantly and put off the things that don’t make us happy.
Unfortunately, procrastinating will only make matters worse. You may miss deadlines, have to rush and make more mistakes, or simply add much more stress and anxiety to a project by putting it off. Here are some tips to help:
Make it manageable. If a project is broad, break it down into steps that you can handle and chip away at each one.
Start easy. If you’re having trouble getting started, begin with an easy part of the project to help get you rolling
Time yourself. Agree to give it an hour to start, then do something else. (You may find you just want to continue on!)
Reward. Sweeten the pot a bit by promising yourself something special after completing the project.
Don’t Let Interruptions Get You Off Track
We all get interrupted from time to time, especially if you’re a supervisor or in charge of other people. You might have unexpected questions come your way, phone calls that require your attention, or pop-up meetings. The key to interruptions is to manage them, not let them manage you.
First, decide if the interruption needs your immediate attention or if it can wait. Often, questions from your colleagues or direct reports can be dealt with later or can be delegated to others. If the interruption does need immediate attention, give it a time limit. Tell the person or people involved that you can spare 30 minutes and then you must get back to your project.
By the way, a quick word about multi-tasking: don’t do it! There was a time when multi-tasking used to be praised in the workplace, but new research clearly indicates that by not giving the task at hand your full attention, you’re bound to make mistakes.
The Quadrants of Time Management
Steven Covey, author, coach, and successful businessman, devised a theory called “The Quadrants of Time Management,” which he wrote about in his best-selling book, “The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People.” It basically states that we have four types of tasks that we face:
Important and urgent tasks (Quadrant 1)
Important but not urgent tasks (Quadrant 2)
Not important but urgent tasks (Quadrant 3)
Not important and not urgent tasks (Quadrant 4)
Quadrant 1 tasks are generally emergencies—they NEED to be dealt with immediately, without a doubt. Think of a house fire, an important deadline, a sickness.
Quadrant 2 tasks are important tasks such as planning, training, coaching, personal growth, attending to health—things that will advance your goals.
Quadrant 3 tasks are things such as interruptions, emails, some meetings, and some phone calls. They are thought of as urgent but not really important, and they do not advance your goals.
Quadrant 4 tasks are time wasters, such as scrolling through social media, surfing the internet, and other trivial activities that do not help advance your goals and effectively waste your time.
Here’s the key to the theory: most of us spent the bulk of our time in Quadrants 1, 3, and 4, with only “leftover” time being devoted to Quadrant 2. We are often “reacting” in Quadrant 1 because we have not planned accordingly in Quadrant 2. Or we like to procrastinate by spending time in Quadrant 4. Or we have our time dictated by interruptions that we do not properly manage, such as in Quadrant 3.
Successful people spend most of their time in Quadrant 2—the planning, anticipating, training, and coaching quadrant. Think of it like this: say you develop a toothache, and you decide to ignore it because you’re too busy to deal with it right now. It goes on for a few months, with the dull pain increasing each week until you finally cannot last any longer and you see the dentist.
By that point, you need a root canal, versus just a cavity filling. In business terms, think of onboarding a new employee. You think you don’t have the time to train your new hire because you are deluged with deadlines. But taking those few extra days up front may make the difference between your new employee’s success or failure.
Develop Good Time Management Skills With Intellezy
Time management is about smartly organizing your time to boost your performance. By taking a few steps to implement time management strategies, you will enhance your productivity, reduce your stress, and have more opportunities for activities that matter most.
Building time management skills takes practice and intentionality. Intellezy can help. We offer award-winning, custom eLearning training to organizations so that employees can thrive. Our corporate training videos are available in 20 languages through closed captions. Contact us to learn more about our videos and eLearning courses.