Time Management : How to manage your time ?

Do you ever feel like there’s not enough time in the day?

We all get the same 24 hours – so why do some people seem to achieve more with their time than others? The answer: good time management.

Time management is the process of organizing and planning how to divide your time between different activities. Get it right, and you’ll end up working smarter, not harder, to get more done in less time – even when time is tight and pressures are high.

The highest achievers manage their time exceptionally well. And by using Mind Tools’ time-management resources, you too can make the most of your time – starting right now!

The Benefits of Good Time Management

When you know how to manage your time effectively, you can unlock many benefits. These include:

• Greater productivity and efficiency.
• Less stress.
• A better professional reputation.
• Increased chances of advancement.
• More opportunities to achieve your life and career goals.

Overall, you start feeling more in control, with the confidence to choose how best to use your time.

And by feeling happier, more relaxed, and better able to think, you’re in a great place to help others reach their targets, too.

List of Tips for Effective Time Management

After considering the benefits of time management, let’s look at some ways to manage time effectively:

1. Wake up early — Make your day longer

All of us get 24 hours in a day. Though it’s not possible to change the number of hours in a day but you can definitely try waking up a little earlier and make your day longer than others. Ideally, your body requires 6–8 hours of sleep to be at your optimum energy levels.

Start with setting up your alarm 15 minutes earlier than before and increase the time frame with the course of time. You can use this additional time to exercise, meditate, prioritize, or even to pursue a hobby. Gradually you’ll increase your daily productivity and time management will never be a trouble.

2. Set goals correctly

Set goals that are achievable and measurable. Use the SMART method when setting goals. In essence, make sure the goals you set are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely.

3. Prioritize wisely

Prioritize tasks based on importance and urgency. For example, look at your daily tasks and determine which are:

• Important and urgent: Do these tasks right away.
• Important but not urgent: Decide when to do these tasks.
• Urgent but not important: Delegate these tasks if possible.
• Not urgent and not important: Set these aside to do later.

4. Set a time limit to complete a task

Setting time constraints for completing tasks helps you be more focused and efficient. Making the small extra effort to decide on how much time you need to allot for each task can also help you recognize potential problems before they arise. That way you can make plans for dealing with them.

For example, assume you need to write up five reviews in time for a meeting. However, you realize that you’ll only be able to get four of them done in the time remaining before the meeting. If you become aware of this fact well in advance, you may be able to easily delegate writing up one of the reviews to someone else. However, if you hadn’t bothered to do a time check on your tasks beforehand, you might have ended up not realizing your time problem until just an hour before the meeting. At that point, it might be considerably more difficult to find someone to delegate one of the reviews to, and more difficult for them to fit the task into their day, too.

5. Take a break between tasks : Discover your zone

When doing a lot of tasks without a break, it is harder to stay focused and motivated. Allow some downtime between tasks to clear your head and refresh yourself. Consider grabbing a brief nap, going for a short walk, or meditating.

You must have noticed that at specific hours you are as focused as an eagle and your productivity shoots up like anything. It happens when your mind is in complete harmony with the external conditions. Some call it ‘flow’ while others refer it as their ‘zone’.

Discovering your flow or zone can directly contribute to the right utilization of your time. It helps you reach an optimal state of consciousness when you feel and perform your best.

6. Organize yourself

Utilize your calendar for more long-term time management. Write down the deadlines for projects, or for tasks that are part of completing the overall project. Think about which days might be best to dedicate to specific tasks. For example, you might need to plan a meeting to discuss cash flow on a day when you know the company CFO is available.

7. Remove non-essential tasks/activities

It is important to remove excess activities or tasks. Determine what is significant and what deserves your time. Removing non-essential tasks/activities frees up more of your time to be spent on genuinely important things.

8. Plan ahead

Make sure you start every day with a clear idea of what you need to do – what needs to get done THAT DAY. Consider making it a habit to, at the end of each workday, go ahead and write out your “to-do” list for the next workday. That way you can hit the ground running the next morning.

9. Block distractions — Get them out of your life

Emails, phone calls, and social media messages are some of the common yet biggest distractions at the workplace. So much so, that you end up wasting 759 hours each year due to workplace distractions. All thanks to these distractions that a task that requires 60 minutes takes more than 3 hours to be accomplished.

Whenever you are working on high-priority tasks, put that phone on silent mode and turning data off. You would end up saving a lot of time and take your efficiency levels a notch higher.

10. No multitasking — Quality over quantity

If you pride yourself for juggling too many tasks at once, here’s a news for you. A research suggests that only 2% of people can multitask effectively. For the remaining 98% of people, multitasking is actually wasting their time and lessening their overall productivity.

Instead of dividing your attention into three different things, it’s better to focus entirely on one thing and marvel at it. To make it more effective, try time boxing them. It refers to the act of allocating a time-frame for every task which in return, increases the likelihood of its successful completion.

11. Find inspiration — quotes, videos, audio books

Following a to-do list or a specific pattern can be boring. It’s hard to concentrate at work when you aren’t fully motivated within. Instead of wasting that time doing something unproductive, utilize it to inspire yourself.

Tape those cliched time-management quotes around your desk. Watch motivational or TEDx videos or listen to audio books talking about time management tips at work. Or, just go for a small walk.

We are familiar with the procrastination phenomena in which you either do nothing at all or engage in useless activities. The chronic procrastinators get an unusual high in putting important things for later and when it is too late, they start panicking. Don’t let procrastination take over your life and let it become a part of your lifestyle.

The best way to deal with procrastination is to break your work into a number of tasks. It not only makes it doable but also gives you a starting point to begin work. Also, try making detailed timelines that give you an exact idea of deadlines. When you surround yourself with people who take action and crush goals instantly, you automatically imbibe such habits and become more proactive with work.

Implications of Poor Time Management

Let’s also consider the consequences of poor time management.

1. Poor workflow

The inability to plan ahead and stick to goals means poor efficiency. For example, if there are several important tasks to complete, an effective plan would be to complete related tasks together or sequentially. However, if you don’t plan ahead, you could end up having to jump back and forth, or backtrack, in doing your work. That translates to reduced efficiency and lower productivity.

2. Wasted time

Poor time management results in wasted time. For example, by talking to friends on social media while doing an assignment, you are distracting yourself and wasting time.

3. Loss of control

By not knowing what the next task is, you suffer from loss of control of your life. That can contribute to higher stress levels and anxiety.

4. Poor quality of work

Poor time management typically makes the quality of your work suffer. For example, having to rush to complete tasks at the last minute usually compromises quality.

5. Poor reputation

If clients or your employer cannot rely on you to complete tasks in a timely manner, their expectations and perceptions of you are adversely affected. If a client cannot rely on you to get something done on time, they will likely take their business elsewhere.

Reference : mindtools.com , corporatefinanceinstitute.com