With our busy lives and never-ending to-do lists, effective time management is more crucial than ever.
As a certified life coach, I help people boost their productivity and get more done so they can enjoy their free time.
Here are the time management tips and techniques I recommend.
Time Management Tips for Getting More Done
If you’re trying to organize busy days, figure out what to focus on, get more done, or need an easy boost to reframe your thinking, try these time management tips.
Use a Planning Tool
Planning tools can help us focus on our most essential tasks so we can get more done. Project management apps like Asana, Trello, or Microsoft Teams offer numerous resources for task management and collaboration.
But you don’t need a team to use them. I use Trello to organize blog posts and the Whiteboard function on Teams to keep track of my biggest goals.
Make a To-Do List
I love lists. Not only do they help me remember everything I need to do, but I also feel immense satisfaction every time I complete a task and cross it off the list.
Take five minutes each morning to write everything you want to do in list form. Then, spend your day knocking stuff off it.
Set Priorities
Our inboxes are constantly flooding with new things to do. But you know what’s vital and what can wait.
Look at your to-do list and decide what’s essential. Circle those crucial tasks and focus on them.
Setting priorities can help you focus on pending deadlines and let go of less important tasks.
Do Not Disturb
If you have ADHD like me, you can’t help but check your phone each time it buzzes or click over to Outlook every time you have a new email.
Use Do Not Disturb mode to avoid these distractions. If you don’t see them, you won’t waste time flitting from one program to the next each time you get a new notification.
Distract your Brain
Many of us focus better when the other side of our brain has something to do. Light a candle and put classical music on in the background.
Give your senses and subconscious mind something to enjoy while you work, undisturbed, in the foreground.
Untangle your Mind
When you have too much on your mind, it’s hard to focus on the task at hand. Take ten minutes to conduct a brain dump before focusing on your priority tasks.
Grab your journal and free write everything that’s on your mind. Let it all come pouring out of you, safely stored in your journal where you can access it later.
It’s off your mind, so you can stop wasting time worrying about it.
Bullet Journaling
MelissaPhotograph via Shutterstock.com.
A bullet journal helps you organize your life and manage your time, depending on how you use it.
Create spreads in your journal dedicated to time management. Record your daily schedule, set priorities, and track accomplishments. Write out your essential tasks and check them off upon completion, use a habit tracker to ensure you finish your daily chores, and outline significant projects so you stay on track.
Productivity Journal
One limitation of the bullet journal method is the time it takes to create and maintain the spreads – especially if you aren’t artistically inclined.
If you don’t enjoy that part of the process, opt for a productivity journal instead.
When journaling for productivity, take a systematic approach. Your goal is performance optimization, so you will want to hone in on work patterns, which tasks created the best outcomes and your daily energy levels. Once you identify those patterns, you can focus on the essential activities.
Visual Aids
Visual learners can use visual aids to manage their time. Set a timer and watch it tick away the seconds, forcing you to focus. Draw something that represents your project, and color in the steps you accomplish along the way. Create a little icon that you can move along a linear task as you progress.
Having something visual to move/finish will help you stay on track to achieve your goals.
Meeting Free Days
Meetings are essential, but they can cut into our time. It’s not just the meeting themselves but also the way they break up the day, only giving us small breaks in between to work.
It’s hard to manage our time when someone else always tries to take it.
Implement meeting-free days. Choose one day per week where you won’t schedule any meetings. Now, you’ll have eight hours of uninterrupted time to focus on your priorities.
Conduct a Time Audit
We can’t manage our time if we don’t even know where it’s going.
A time audit can help.
Take two weeks to record everything you’re doing in 15-minute increments. Learn where and how you’re spending the majority of your time. You may find that you spend far more time on household chores than your partner or that five-minute Reddit break was a half hour.
Now that you know where your time goes, you can be more intentional about using it how you want to use it.
Stop Multitasking
Everyone thinks they get more done via multitasking, but the opposite is usually true. When we multitask, we must constantly switch focus, costing valuable seconds.
Sometimes, we have no choice – if the phone rings, we have to answer it, right? But when you do have a choice, stop. Focus on one thing at a time until you are finished.
Not only will you get more done, but you’ll also find that your product quality improves.
Set Your Environment
Is your environment conducive to work? Sometimes, we can’t manage our time because our workstation constantly vies for our attention.
If your workspace is cluttered or too inviting for noisy coworkers, you may have too many distractions to focus on. You’ll have more control of your time once you create a work environment that helps you focus.
Take Care of Needs First
Have you tried focusing when you’re hungry, have to use the restroom, or the dog’s whining to go outside? You can’t get anything done because you’re constantly getting up to care for everything else.
Do all that stuff first.
Have a snack, feed the cat, and let the dog out and back in. When everyone’s needs are met, you won’t have to worry about constant interruptions and can focus on the task at hand.
Time Management Techniques to Try
If the tips don’t work, you may need a time management technique that adds structure to your day.
Productivity experts developed these time management methods to help people get more done in less time.
They’re more involved and take more dedication than the tips above, but they work well if you commit to them.
Time Blocking
Time blocking helps us organize our busy lives. Take everything in your day, from work tasks to social engagements, self-care to chores, and block out time for each task.
Your time blocks should fill your calendar from when you wake up to when you go to sleep (but hey, sleep should be there, too!).
These blocks give you a schedule, ensuring you know exactly what you should focus on each hour of each day.
Time Boxing
Though it sounds similar, time boxing is very different than time blocking. You don’t need to time-box everything in your day. Instead, you use it to “box off” a portion of time to focus on a specific task or project.
For example, say you have a wedding to plan but don’t have much time to focus on it between work and chores. Use time boxing to dedicate four uninterrupted hours on Saturday mornings to wedding planning.
Box that time out on your calendar, and don’t do anything else.
The 80/20 Rule
The Pareto principle, better known as the 80/20 rule, tells us that approximately 80% of our outputs come from just 20% of our inputs.
That means the vast majority of our accomplishments, which move our lives forward, result from just 1/5 of what we focus on.
Translating the 80/20 rule into a time management technique means laser-focusing on the 20% of tasks that will produce the biggest wins. Spend time on the projects that will produce the most significant results first.
Kanban
The Kanban method for productivity was first developed at Toyota to improve efficiency. It worked so well as a supply chain management tool that it morphed into a time management technique.
Kanban provides a visual representation of time use via the Kanban board. It’s different than other time management boards in that you can set strict limits in certain fields. For example, you can force yourself to only work 8 hours per day or to focus only on 4 tasks. These limits help direct your efforts to the task at hand.
The Pomodoro Method
If you struggle to focus, you should implement the Pomodoro time management method.
Here, you commit to focusing on a given task for a short time frame, like 25 minutes. The idea is that anyone can focus on anything for at least a little bit. If you know there is a light at the end of the short tunnel, you can get your brain to do it.
Flowtime
The Flowtime technique enhances the Pomodoro method by injecting flexibility.
With the Pomodoro method, you stop when the time tells you to stop, no matter what. However, the Flowtime method recognizes that sometimes, you get into creative mode and have to keep going.
If the time goes off and you’re enthralled in your project, keep at it until you’ve had enough.
Eisenhower Matrix
The Eisenhower Matrix, named after the president who developed it, helps you prioritize tasks based on two crucial variables: its urgency and its importance.
The matrix divides tasks into four categories: urgent and important, urgent but not important, important but not urgent, and neither urgent nor important. You can ignore things that fall into the last category and focus on things that fall into the first.
Getting Things Done (GTD)
Productivity expert David Allen designed the GTD method for time management with a basic five-step plan for setting priorities.
The steps help you turn complex projects or concepts of plans into actionable tasks you can accomplish. They also help you organize your time because rather than thinking about the massive, big-picture stuff that seems overwhelming, you break everything down into simple tasks you can achieve.
Rapid Planning Method
The Rapid Planning Method, developed by famed life coach Tony Robbins, is almost the complete opposite of the GTD method.
It’s not a time management or productivity tool as much as it’s a life planning process that helps you cut out the clutter and focus on what matters, which, in effect, helps you manage your time.
The basic idea is to ask yourself what you really want, decide why you want it, and then determine what you need to get it. Then, you should focus on doing the things you identify in the final question, letting go of everything else that doesn’t matter.
10-Minute Rule
The 10-minute rule posits that every task should take less than ten minutes, so if something on your to-do list takes longer, break it down.
The 10-minute rule helps you achieve seemingly overwhelming tasks by breaking them down into smaller increments. It also helps you manage your time, as finding a 10-minute block to accomplish a task is easier than setting aside three hours for a massive project.
Let’s say you need to clean the kitchen, a chore that will take far longer than ten minutes. Break it down into ten-minute activities:
- Load the dishwasher
- Wipe the counters
- Clean the stove
- Sweep the floor
- Mop
Each of these by themselves doesn’t seem as overwhelming.
Eat the Frog
The time management technique arising from the productivity book of the same name has a simple premise: Do the thing you dread first.
Nobody wants to eat a frog. But if you have to do it and put it off, it will always be there, lingering at the back of your brain, preventing you from focusing. So do it and get it over with.
Once it’s done, you’ll be free to focus on everything else.
Biological Prime Time
The biological prime time method of time management hypothesizes that everyone has a specific time that they’re better suited for certain tasks.
Some folks may be more creative in the morning, while others are more clear-headed after lunch.
Each person must learn their own “biological prime time” and develop a schedule that matches their strengths.
The 5-Minute Timer
You can do anything for 5 minutes, right? The 5-minute timer is perfect for people like me who have ADHD and struggle to get started because a task seems overwhelming.
There’s a pile of dishes in the sink, but you don’t want to spend hours washing dishes.
So don’t. Set a timer for 5 minutes and do as much as you can. You may find that it’s easier to keep going once you start, but if not, at least you knocked out five minutes of the chore.
1-3-5 Rule
The 1-3-5 rule guides your daily schedule development, helping you decide where to focus your efforts to get the most done.
In the 1-3-5 rule, you focus on:
- One big task
- Three medium tasks
- Five small tasks
This way, you can feel accomplished by crossing one massive item off your to-do list while handling smaller things that get in the way.
Manage Your Time, Manage Your Life
Time management is essential to a happy life. We never get more time, so it’s crucial that we make the best of every minute we have.
That means getting more done in less time so we have more time to enjoy our lives. And that’s what it’s really all about, isn’t it?