Everyone needs to learn how to manage time effectively at some point. Without effective time management, something will always end up falling through the cracks. On top of that, you’ll probably be overwhelmed with the stress of managing so much at once without a proper plan of attack.
Effective time management will help you with your career as well as handling your personal life. It leads to a more productive and less stressful life – with more free time to boot. Without further ado, here are 18 effective tips to help you manage your time effectively.
1. Set Concrete, Realistic Goals With Deadlines
Setting goals is important, but it’s also important to make them specific and achievable. If you have a hard time doing that, remember the SMART method. If you don’t know about it, that means set goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. An example of a good goal to help you manage your time better might be something like “between 8 AM and 12 PM I will not answer my personal phone or do anything unrelated to work.”
Additionally, setting hard time limits can be a boon when you’re trying to figure out how much you can accomplish. Of course, if you give yourself a deadline that is clearly unattainable, then you’ll end up hurting yourself in the long run. Start taking note of how long it takes you to do certain tasks, especially if they’re somewhat routine, so you can start setting realistic timelines.
2. Make Priorities
At the end of the day, you need to prioritize and focus on doing what needs to get done. A good rule of thumb is that if a task is important and has a tight deadline, do it right away. If it is fairly important but doesn’t have a tight deadline, make time for it somewhere in your schedule. If it isn’t important or urgent, you can decide when you might need to do it (or have time for it), set it aside to come back to later, or even see about assigning it to someone else (if it is related to work or a business).
3. Make Time For Fun
When all you do is work, you’ll burn yourself out. Throughout your typical work day, be sure you take the time to get away and cool down for a quick break every now and then. On top of that, when you aren’t at work make sure you have some time for leisure activities – whatever it is that you enjoy doing.
4. Create A System Or Use Tools To Stay Organized, Like A To-Do List
Everyone has different ways they like to stay organized. I highly recommend you make use of some sort of calendar or to-do list to stay on track, especially if you have a hectic or busy life. There are tons of apps you can use to make these easy and simple for you, but I prefer to use pen and paper when I do my planning.
This may sound over-the-top to a lot of people, but I write out a general to-do list each week. It includes most of the major tasks I need to accomplish, and I make sure to not overwhelm myself and only set what I think I can reasonably accomplish within a given week. I also tend to schedule some “catch up” time in case something unexpected happened and I wasn’t able to accomplish my goals on one day. In addition to the weekly to-do list, I also have a monthly to-do list. Most people don’t need something like that, and I mainly use it to keep track of when I’m posting or working on a specific piece for the blog.
5. Plan In Advance When Possible
Related to using tools to keep yourself organized, at the very minimum start the day knowing what you need to accomplish. It doesn’t need to be complex, and you don’t necessarily need to plan it out far in advance, but if you wake up knowing what you need to accomplish it makes actually accomplishing it easier.
6. Make The Tough Calls, Drop Activities That Aren’t Truly Important To You
Bonus points if you can find minor tasks that sap your time and are unnecessary, like endlessly browsing the web or watching videos online! If an activity doesn’t really help you, and eats huge chunks of your time, try to stop doing it or save it for your leisure time only.
7. Understand That Time Is Finite
Each day, you only have 24 hours to work with. Time management is truly about managing you and your behaviors, not time.
8. Where Applicable, Finds Ways To Outsource Or Automate Tasks
Depending on what it is, it may be hard or impossible to automate your tasks. If you have the ability, do it. However, if you’re fairly high-ranking at a company or own your business, considering outsourcing or delegating some of your responsibilities to other people. I don’t mean this in the sense of you pushing off “your” work onto other people, but you need to let other people help you – micromanaging is just as bad as a lack of management altogether.
9. Make A Simple Routine And Stick To It
It may sound weird if you don’t have one, but routines help people become and stay more productive. If you have a system set up to streamline some of your tasks that you follow consistently, you’ll find that you get better and faster at it. If you’re doing this at the beginning of the day it also helps you start on the right foot so you can keep the productivity up!
10. When You’re Waiting Somewhere Or Commuting, Make Use Of That Time
At some point we’ve all had to wait for an appointment or be stuck in traffic during a commute – but that time doesn’t have to be wasted! With your smart phone you can easily stay productive. You can read, listen to a podcast, check the status of some project, make calls, check texts and voicemail, and I’m sure a ton more. Of course, if you’re driving make sure that you’re still paying attention to the road!
11. Expect The Unexpected, Prepare Some Time In Your Schedule For Unplanned Events Or Opportunities
I mentioned this a bit when I explained how I do my to-do lists. It’s rather important to make sure you allot time for things you might not be able to plan for. I consistently get surprised with one or two tasks each week that might throw me off if I hadn’t set aside a little bit of time for extra work. Also, having that extra time will let you make use of opportunities that come your way that you might not have had time for otherwise. For example, you may be able to go to an event related to work you didn’t know about – like a convention or a casual team meeting after hours.
12. Do Demanding Tasks In The Morning
Better yet, do demanding tasks as part of your morning routine. Surprisingly, while you’re still in the “waking up” phase you can get a lot of productive tasks done. Also, getting through the morning will some or all of your major tasks done for the day makes getting everything else done even easier.
13. Prepare On A Day Off Before The Start Of Your Week, Like Sunday
It doesn’t have to take long – maybe 10-20 minutes – to set yourself up for a week of success. Make sure you at least know the major things you’ll need to accomplish during the week, and prepare for Monday however you need to.
14. Make Time To Exercise And Sleep
Make time for your health! I know it may seem like you’re wasting time, but if you don’t exercise or sleep properly you won’t be able to be as productive during the day. Get some sleep, stick to a workout routine, and I’m sure your productivity will skyrocket.
15. Make “No” Your Best Friend
If something doesn’t align with your goals or what you can afford to spend your time on, it’s always okay to say no. You have your priorities and people should respect that – if you need to, you can always say something like “I don’t know if I can, I’ll have to get back to you.”
16. Find Joy In What You’re Doing Daily
If you obsess about being productive all the time, you’ll drain yourself and never have any time to enjoy life. Do what you need to reach your goals, but try to make sure you enjoy life while you’re at it.
17. Know How To Get Into Your Work “Mode” And The Best Time For It
Everyone has a specific time and setup that helps that work hard and well. Whatever you call it, and whatever the conditions or setup are, find it and use it to your advantage. If you can figure out when and how you do your best work, you can use that to consistently produce great results. For example, I tend to do the best writing in my office, between 6 and 9 PM, without noise like TV (although sometimes music helps).
18. Stop Multi-Tasking – Block Out Your Distractions
If your phone, social media, TV, or anything else stops your from working – don’t let it. Find ways to eliminate your distractions, whether it be by putting your phone on silent or turning off the TV. Even if your distraction is “productive” in the sense it is more work that you need to get done, you need to stop and focus on one thing at a time. Tackle each item separately. You’ll get it done faster, and the end result will be much better. Don’t underestimate the utility of being able to focus on a single task for an extended period of time.
Conclusion
Time management skills are pretty straightforward, but it’s up to you to have the discipline to follow them. I hope you liked these 18 time management tips, and if you have one of your own add it in the comments! For more content like this, be sure to sign up for the Bitter to Richer newsletter.
