A Detailed Guide to Time Management Skills and Techniques

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We tend to think of time management, productivity, and “being busy” as synonymous concepts. We
believe that to excel in our business and personal lives, we must constantly be on the go, maybe even
sleep-deprived, as we cram in working, studying, child care, writing a novel, training for an ascent up
Mount Rainier, and preparing gourmet dinners. As productivity expert Julie Morgenstern says,
“Everybody is overloaded. Everybody shows it.”

While time management can help you increase productivity in all areas of your life, it isn’t just about
cramming more in. Rather, it’s about understanding what you need to do, what you want to do, and
how long each thing takes. In this article, we’ll hear from experts about the new perception of time you
need to acquire and the skills and techniques you need to make the best - not the busiest - of your time. 

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 What Is Time Management?

 What Are Good Time Management Skills?

 More Tried and True Time Management Skills

 Why Use Time Management?

 Think Globally: Time Management Tips for Remote Teams

 Crucial Conversations About Time Management Techniques

 What Are the Techniques of Time Management?

 What Are the Top Tips for Time Management?

 Time Management Tips for Your Job Search

 How Can I Learn Time Management Skills and Techniques?

 A More Effective Way to Manage Your Time with Smartsheet

What Is Time Management?

 
Definitions of time management usually revolve around the ability to use time productively and
efficiently, especially for work, business, and school. However, productivity consultant David Allen
says time management  is a misnomer. “You can’t manage time anyway. Time just is,” says the inventor
of the Getting Things Done method. “But you can manage yourself during time, so what you manage is
your attention, your focus.”

Julie Morgenstern is a productivity expert and the New York Times best-selling author of Time
Management from the Inside Out. She says that we need to understand time management differently
than we currently do. “I would start by changing your perception of time,” she says. “It’s sort of an
ethereal, ambiguous thing, and I teach people to think of time like a closet. It’s a limited amount of
space that’s only going to fit so much. Once you get a visual metaphor of time as a closet, it becomes so
much easier to manage it,” notes Morgenstern.

Related Resource:

How to Speed Up Your Decision-Making Process

What Are Good Time Management Skills?

For Morgenstern, once you view the days of your life as limited space, like a closet, you can begin to see
that not everything will fit: “Even if you’re willing to work 12 hours a day, it’s still a limited amount of
time, and if you are trying to do 15 hours worth of work in a 12 hour day, it’s not going to work. You’re
going to feel frustrated at the end of the day. You’re going to feel that you didn’t get enough done.”
Morgenstern offers the following time management tips:

 Be a Time Estimator: The solution is to become a good time estimator. “The gateway skill to
good time management is when you ask not just what you need to do, but how long it will
take,” notes Morgenstern. Ask that question for every request or interruption, and with that
information, you can decide what will fit in your time closet. In addition, she suggests adding
a how long  column to your to-do list. “Once you start quantifying tasks and time, you’re in a
position to tangibly manage your obligations and make much better decisions.”

 Be a Time Mapper: Morgenstern also recommends organizing your time closet by creating what
she calls a time map. “A time map is a template for your week,” she says. “You take the 160
hours in the week and the 24 hours in the day and chart that out. You include what time you
wake up and what time you go to sleep. Everything in between is the space you have to work
with. That’s the closet of your day.”
Executives have recurring meetings. Parents have the early, daily drop-off at school. Still, Morgenstern
thinks students can especially benefit from the templates. For their time map, students add their classes
as known quantities. They might decide that Friday night is always their social time, but that Saturday is
the day to do errands. “You create a structure,” adds Morgenstern. “That time budget is a template, so
you fill in the blanks.” Your to-do list of errands is applied to the Saturday slot. Your assignments may
change, but you know you’ll be studying every night between 6pm and 9pm. “The routine of always
knowing when something happens really fuels efficiency,” she emphasizes.

Routine can also help you spot work/life imbalances. “It goes back to the closet image,” Morgenstern
says. “If your jeans go here, your sweaters go here, your t-shirts go here, and your belts go here, it’s easy
to see if you have too much or too little of something. You can see how in balance you are. But if
everything is scattered, you can’t see if you have too many jeans or not. Similarly, regarding your day, if
you group similar tasks, you’re more efficient and you can see how you’re doing in terms of your life. If
one category is monopolizing your life at the expense of others, you need to find ways to shrink this
down to make room for something else.”

 4-Ds: Delete, Delay, Diminish, Delegate: Morgenstern finds that when you really look at how
long things take and when you become a good time estimator, things always take longer than
you have time for. That’s when the 4-Ds can help. Use them to streamline a task or your entire
to-do list, for work or at home. 

1. Delete: Ask yourself if the return on investment in a project is worthwhile. Maybe it duplicates

work already done.

2. Delay: Does it have to be done now? Can it be eked out over time or started at a later date?

3. Diminish: Can you limit the scope? Instead of taking 12 hours to do a report, would a one-hour
conference call suffice?

4. Delegate: Can somebody else do it, and better? Is it perhaps somebody else’s job in the first
place? 

More Tried and True Time Management Skills

You might know these skills already. As Morgenstern suggests, “Tackle one skill at a time, one tool at
time, and one strategy at a time. Don’t think that by reading one article and tackling one strategy your
life is going to run perfectly.”

 Set SMART goals. To get somewhere, you need to know where you’re going. You also need to
be able to measure your progress. SMART goals are specific, measurable, and realistic, so you
have a greater chance of achieving them and knowing when you’re going to get there. 
  Make to-do lists. Lists help you to remember things, which seems like an obvious advantage.
But they also free your mind so you can focus on bigger, more important concepts or problems
without carrying all that baggage around. 

As organization and time management author David Allen says, “Your mind is for having ideas, not
holding them.” 

Have you ever lain awake after midnight trying to remember everything you need to do during the next
week? It’s amazing how quickly and comfortably you go sleep after you’ve gotten up and made a list. A
list is a stress reducer, as you see the big picture when your responsibilities are written down. Lists also
provide a record of your efforts. And, when a task is done, you have the reward of checking items off as
done. Here are some additional time management tactics to help you use your time effectively: 

 Prioritize: You may need to complete goals in a certain order, and this is especially true for
tasks. Some tasks need to be accomplished immediately, others not. Learning the difference
between urgent and important items may help. (We’ll delve deeper into this later on.)

 Chunk Activities: Break a big job into smaller tasks. When Theodore Melfi directed the
movie Hidden Figures, he didn’t just go to the set and film the whole thing in one go. He and his
team blocked each scene and filmed shots one at a time. Chunking can help with the next skill.

 Avoid Procrastination: Procrastination often arises from fear of failure and being overwhelmed.
Remember, your fear is probably worse than the thing you need to do. If it is that bad, a solution
is out there. As Colonel Hal Moore said, “There’s always one more thing you can do to influence
any situation in your favor — and after that, there’s one more thing, and after that there’s one
more thing, etc. The more you do, the more opportunities arise.” 

 Consider Why You Procrastinate: If you do procrastinate, don’t shy away from the problem out
of shame. Ask yourself why you’re doing it. Morgenstern suggests that for activities you’re
avoiding or that seem to consume too much time, time yourself on three occasions while
completing that same task, and then check the average time. Timing may help offer insights
about problems concerning the activity. 

 Persevere: This skill is a particularly important one for young people to learn. Of course, in the
context of a volatile economy and uncertain job security, it’s important to remember at any age.
There are good and bad days, and mistakes are opportunities to learn. To put a bright spin on
the ancient concept of the wheel of fortune, your luck will come around.

 Understand the Difference Between Efficiency and Effectiveness: As the management

guru Peter Drucker said, “Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.”
Let that be a lesson to people who always need to jump in. Before plowing ahead, think about
something for five minutes to determine if it’s worthwhile. 
  Use Organizational and Planning Tools: Your phone can remind you about appointments, so
you don’t have to worry about keeping every little meeting. Digitizing your files can help clear
your desk, as well as all the other surfaces of your home and office. Use technology - it can help. 

 Celebrate Small Achievements: When you’ve reached a milestone or goal, reward yourself. 

Why Use Time Management?

Time management skills can help you balance conflicting demands on your time. Learning to better
manage your time can help you:

 Relieve stress.

 Maximize your accomplishments.

 Track the tasks that lead to your goals.

 Be more organized.

Think Globally: Time Management Tips for Remote Teams

e live in a global world with remote work teams, and even remote friends and families. Office hours are
essentially 24/7, so it’s easy to get caught up in the frenzy and leave the phone on, even on weekends
and vacations. 

Julie Morgenstern recognizes this: “I think a person’s impulse is to try to do as much as they can in an
environment like that. Like a kid in a candy shop. ‘There’s so much happening, and I should try to keep
up and do as much as I can.’” Morgenstern recommends you reframe your thinking.

“It’s like going into a supermarket. It takes enormous discipline to come out with just the three things
you went in for. Most people go in for three things and come out with a cart full of stuff. There’s so
much there, and it becomes tempting. So you need a mindfulness to take the time before you go in
every day to plan tomorrow. Say what the most important things are to do, and focus — use the muscle
of focus — and, yes, be open to distractions, but not too many, because you don’t always want to leave
everyday with a cart full. You just want the three things you went in for.”

And what about those time differences? Say you’re on a deadline for a project. Your translator in the UK
needs to upload the French translations, so you, in San Francisco, can publish them when you come in at
8 a.m. Pacific Time. However, she’s working her way through languages alphabetically and is still
working on Chinese translations. For situations like this, Morgenstern says you need to establish a
dialogue about time. “Without it, people are just not aware. They’re not thinking about it. If you assume
they’re going to figure it out, that’s misguided. They don’t know. They probably don’t even know how
long their own stuff takes,” she stresses.
 

Crucial Conversations About Time Management Techniques

According to Morgenstern, conversations about time management need to happen in many situations,
not just with remote teams. “I think talking about time is the other thing people don’t do. They just suck
it up, and there’s no dialogue around time. People just say ok and try to figure out where they’re going
to find the time, or they stay up late and suffer in silence,” she points out. 

A key tool she recommends is asking not only what you should do, but also how long it will take. And
just asking those questions can also reveal misunderstandings. “If someone says, ‘I think that will take
me five hours,’ ask how they’re approaching it. Ask them to talk you through it, and then you can say,
‘Oh, wait a minute. I wasn’t expecting you to do a 40-page summary. All I was expecting was a five-bullet
email,’” she explains. “Just having those conversations saves so many people so much time.”

What Are the Techniques of Time Management?

Techniques are collections of skills. The power of employing techniques is that an expert has already
perfected the steps for you. Therefore, all you have to do is apply them. The following are some of the
current, major time management techniques. 

 Pomodoro: Created by software developer Francesco Cirillo, pomodoro is a time management

technique named for the Italian word for tomato. Cirillo’s inspiration for the method came from
the tomato timer he used to help him focus while studying at university. You set a timer (not
necessarily a tomato-shaped one) for 25 minutes and work on a single task or project. When the
timer goes off, you’ve accomplished one pomodoro. Take a brief break of about two minutes,
during which you can look up that recipe or play with the dog. Set the timer again. Complete
four pomodoros. Then take a longer break. 

 18 Minutes: This technique comes from the book 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master
Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done , written by Peter Bregman. In essence, it works like
this:

 Each morning, spend five minutes deciding what you need to do that day and what will help you
to feel that you’ve accomplished something.

 Each hour, spend one minute considering if you’ve used the hour productively.

 Each evening, spend five minutes to assess what you’ve learned and accomplished during that
day.
  Domino Reaction: Promoted by author Amit Offir in his book 24/8 - The Secret for Being Mega-
Effective by Achieving More in Less Time, this technique posits that, over time, some activities
have a greater cumulative payback than others. The most commonly cited example of a domino
reaction activity is writing a book, which presumably continues to generate revenue even after
its completion. For instance, the book may garner you interviews or invitations to work on other
projects. 

 Getting Things Done: Getting Things Done (GTD) is a methodology for organization and time
management developed by David Allen and discussed in his 2001 book of the same title. Allen
himself describes it as “a set of best practices that allows you to get more space in your head, so
you have more bandwidth, attention, and ability to focus on the most meaningful stuff.”

The GTD system has five basic steps:

 Collect: Gather all the sticky notes and bills littering your space, and write down any
appointments, ideas, or tasks.

 Process: 400 times a day, for several seconds, review these items. Work through each in the
order in which they appear in your list or inbox to decide what’s needed. Can you complete the
task? Can you delegate it? Do you have to wait to finish it, or can you wait to finish it? 

 Organize: Toss it, file it, or add it to a calendar or to-do list.

 Review: Review your inbox, your calendar, your to-do list, your office, or what’s on your mind as
often as you need to in order to keep your mind clear and stress-free.

 Do: Start or finish your tasks. Contrary to other tips, which advise doing the difficult or
unpleasant tasks first, GTD suggests you try to do things in context, as they arise. 

To Allen, the beauty of the system is that you can start wherever you are, even if you’re sitting in a
forest of paper piles. “All you need to do is pick up something out of the pile and say, What the hell is
this? and What’s the next action I need to take on this? A lot of systems start by saying you should set
goals, get organized, set priorities, have a purpose, etc., and most people say, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I should.
But, our day-to-day and hour-to-hour life is out of our control, and if that’s out of our control, trying to
set goals or set a bigger vision is just going to blow more fuses for us.”

“The big secret of Getting Things Done is not so much about getting things done. It’s about being
appropriately engaged with all levels of commitments in your life, so you can be totally present in
whatever you’re doing” - David Allen, time management guru

 Timeboxing: With this technique, you set a specific start date and deadline, thus limiting the
time to work on a task or project. Use this on your own or with teams in the workplace. Scrum, a
framework for managing projects that stresses teamwork, accountability, and incremental
progress toward  a well-defined goal, employs various timeboxes, including the sprint, which is a
timebox of one month or shorter duration.
  POSEC: This time management technique often appears in business guides and is a riff on
Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs. POSEC helps you reach your goals (self-
actualization in Maslow-speak) by recommending that you chunk. If you work through the
POSEC steps correctly, you scale Maslow’s hierarchy to attain personal happiness. The POSEC
steps are as follows:

 Prioritize and define your goals and tasks, and order them in terms of the most important and
achievable in the time allotted.

 Organize and figure out the best way to accomplish your everyday tasks, such as feeding the cat
or getting groceries. 

 Streamline and simplify the things you have to do but don’t like to do, so you’ll have more time
and energy for other things.

 Economize and reduce the things that are not urgent. 

 Contribute. Achieving your tasks and goals should give you the opportunity to give back to
society. You can also consider this step the delayed payoff from certain activities. 

 COPE Technique: American productivity expert Peggy Duncan has developed the cope
technique, which includes the following steps: 

 Clear: Get clear on your goals.

 Organized: Organize everything you must do. 

 Productive: Prioritize your tasks and goals. 

 Efficient: Work on finishing the priority items. 

 Triage Technique: Invented during the Napoleonic wars to assign degrees of urgency to soldiers’
illnesses, you can apply the basic concept to any organization and time management question.
Determine which of these three categories your tasks fall under:

 Things that are important but not urgent. Planning for your toddler’s post-secondary education
is important, but it’s not yet urgent. 

 Things that are a waste of time. For example, learning to tile and buying all the supplies for one
20-square-foot bathroom floor may not be worth the effort, if you don’t plan to tile another
floor again in your life.
  Things that need immediate action. If you’re a student taking your SAT exam in a week, you
need to study now. If you’re a store manager, and a customer and a clerk are having a heated
skirmish, you need to defuse the situation immediately. 

 Triage Technique: Invented during the Napoleonic wars to assign degrees of urgency to soldiers’
illnesses, you can apply the basic concept to any organization and time management question.
Determine which of these three categories your tasks fall under:

 Things that are important but not urgent. Planning for your toddler’s post-secondary education
is important, but it’s not yet urgent. 

 Things that are a waste of time. For example, learning to tile and buying all the supplies for one
20-square-foot bathroom floor may not be worth the effort, if you don’t plan to tile another
floor again in your life.

 Things that need immediate action. If you’re a student taking your SAT exam in a week, you
need to study now. If you’re a store manager, and a customer and a clerk are having a heated
skirmish, you need to defuse the situation immediately. 

 Eisenhower Method or Covey’s Time Management Grid: We can trace this method back to
Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in World War II and
34th president of the United States. It was inspired by his comment that, “What is important is
seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important.” Organizational guru Stephen
Covey adapted the method in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Covey coined
his version of the technique the time management grid. The grid is a box containing four
quadrants:

1. Urgent and Important: Do these tasks first. An example is running to catch the dog if it runs into
the street.

2. Important but Not Urgent: Put these on a calendar to do later. These include things like reading
a book for professional development or moving the planters to scrub the deck. 

3. Urgent but Not Important: These items include interruptions, such as reading unsolicited email
instead of turning off your phone or computer. 

4. Not Urgent and Not Important: These items yield the least direct value and distract you from
your priorities. 
People often find that their activities fall into quadrants 1 and 3. Try to focus on quadrant 2 activities.
Although these activities are often easy to achieve, they can offer significant benefits to all parts of your
life. To use the time management grid or matrix, add your to-do list items to each box as you deem
appropriate. You can also use the matrix as an analysis tool by making six copies and using one for each
day to track how you spend time. In the sixth copy, add up the week’s activities for each quadrant, and
estimate what percentage of time you spent on each. We’ve included templates of the Eisenhower box
that you can download, print, and use to track your own time usage. 

‌ Download Time Management Matrix Template - WORD

 A-B-C Method: Managers originally used the ABC method for supply chain management to
determine which stock returned the most value for effort. For the purpose of time management,
you apply the technique by grouping your tasks into categories A, B, and C. Similar to the
Eisenhower method, each category represents a different priority level:

 A = important and urgent 

  B = important but not urgent

 C = not important and not urgent

Take your to-do list and assign each of your tasks to the appropriate category. Now, within each group,
prioritize each task. For example, Task A1 should be done first and so on. 

 Pareto Analysis (of Time versus Result): People sometimes refer to this as the 80-20 principle.
Often pejoratively applied to human activities, such as working and volunteering, the Pareto
analysis describes the perceived phenomenon in which 20 percent of the people are said to
produce 80 percent of the results, while the other 80 percent of the people sit and talk about
results and judge others’ actions. You can apply this method thoughtfully and without
judgement in your personal life or with your work team. Consider what activities or processes
produce the most results. That should form the basis of your efforts. 
  How the ABC and Pareto Methods Work Together: Look at your A group and determine which
tasks you’ll complete the fastest. Then do those. You can do them in 20 percent of your time.

What Are the Top Tips for Time Management?

No matter what you do with your life, most tips for organizing your time are relevant. Whether you’re a
student, a caregiver, an executive, or a worker, these tips can help: 

 Do a time log for a week to determine where you spend your time. Be honest. Look at the time
you waste. 

 Have higher-level and intermediate goals. How can you figure out what you need to do, if you
don’t know what you want to accomplish?

 Keep a to-do list. List the tasks needed to accomplish those goals. 

 Curate your to-do list daily. Every morning, create a new list of what needs to be done that day.
At the end of the day, think about what you need to do tomorrow, and then make that list.

 Use one of the time management techniques to organize all of your lists and establish your
priorities. You might try adding the things you don’t want to do first. Also, add one likable
activity to that set of unlikable activities. 

 Learn to say no. If you have to focus, focus. If you can’t take on another project without the
quality suffering, then don’t. If you don’t feel like you should go to a dinner party, a fundraiser,
or out for a drink with friends, just don’t. 

 Eliminate distractions. If you need to finish something, lock yourself in your office, and ignore
your email. Also consider any frequent daily interruptions and how you might avoid them.

 Delegate. This applies to small business owners, managers, and maybe even cohabitants.
  Consider your health. Take breaks, get rest, and don’t work on your holidays or every weekend.
Have some periods of complete downtime. And sleep!

 Work in blocks of similar activities.

 Don’t multitask. Extensive studies show that the vast majority of people aren’t good at it. If it’s
an absolute must though, and you’re one of the few who can do it effectively, then do it.

 Use waiting time during your commute or in a doctor’s office to get things done. Review class
notes, make your grocery list, etc. 

 Use tools to help you schedule and organize. 

 Don’t procrastinate, but if you do, ask yourself why.

Time Management Tips for Your Job Search

While you can apply general time management tips to any part of your life, searching for a job can be
particularly taxing and demoralizing, which is why managing your time effectively is critical. Here are
some important time management tips to assist you in your job search: 

 Schedule time for researching companies and reviewing interview questions. If you truly want
another job, blocking off this time is vital, whether you already have a job, or you’re currently
unemployed. Don’t let the hours and days get away from you just because no one is structuring
your time.

 Use tools to help you stay organized and on track. Don’t forget appointment times or lose
important contact information by using scraps of paper. Keep all your job search information in
one place, like a notebook or an online task management program.

 Chunk goals into smaller tasks. A job search can feel overwhelming. Just remember, one task at
a time. And don’t get discouraged by news about the weak job market — you only need one.

 Learn to say no. If you need to prepare for an interview, don’t agree to bake three dozen
cookies for the preschool party. 

 Delegate. Maybe it’s time for the kids to learn to pack their own (nutritious) lunches or for your
neighbor to chauffeur the soccer team.

 Ask how long interviews are expected to last. You need to mentally prepare for marathon, four-
hour sessions, and you also have to schedule the rest of your life. Moreover, asking this type of
question makes you look like a good time manager.

Laura Rotter is a talent acquisition and benefits manager. She says that as a job candidate, you can
demonstrate your time management skills before you even appear for your first interview. 
“The real way to see if someone has good time management skills is if they are highly responsive in
communication. Some people will respond to a request for an interview days and weeks later,” says
Rotter. The optimum response time is no later than one day. The same is true for the thank you note
after the interview. Your email should arrive by the morning of the next business day.

What about your resume? How can you demonstrate that you budget your time well? Rotter says that
HR professionals tend to be wary of self-descriptions. (So much for the ubiquitous keen self-starter.) “A
clean, tight resume effectively conveys the message that you’re a person with a good system for staying
on top of things” advises Rotter. 

How Can I Learn Time Management Skills and Techniques?

You’ve read the tips and techniques. Maybe you’ve even read 20 other articles about time management.
So, how can you incorporate the benefits into your everyday life?

Allen sees time management as the skill of choosing better priorities: “That’s a lifelong process. That’s a
constant challenge. As a matter of fact, the better you get, the better you better get, because you’re
then going to walk into the stress of opportunity. You’re going to have so many choices of cool things
you could be doing, that that choice in itself will cause a lot of the stress.”

Morgenstern says, “What I don’t see written about enough is that time management is a life skill that
takes a lifetime to master. Nobody is a master time manager.” She says that good time management
won’t ensure that you always spend time well. “I think good time management is about having a toolkit
of techniques and strategies that you rely on to both plan your time as proactively and mindfully as
possible, and to recover when life throws you curveballs.”

We also need to stop judging ourselves so harshly about what we do with our time. “Time management
is a very personal subject because how we spend our time is how we spend our lives,” Morgenstern
continues. “And in my experience, people feel guilty. They beat themselves up. They call themselves lazy
or procrastinators or losers. Get out of the beating-yourself-up game. Time management is a hard skill,
but you can sharpen it over time,” she concludes.

Ultimately, time management is an ongoing process. It’s daily, monthly, even yearly. You need to
regularly evaluate whether you’re spending your time wisely and in ways that reward you and make you
happy. Make an appointment with yourself. You deserve it.

A More Effective Way to Manage Your Time with Smartsheet

Balancing a busy life requires efficiency. Luckily, there are several tools to help you manage your time
effectively. One such tool is Smartsheet, a collaborative work management platform that enables
enterprises and teams to work better.

You can use Smartsheet to create weekly agendas, build reports, and manage appointments. Track to-
do’s and team task lists, set reminders and notifications, and assign tasks to keep work moving forward.
Plus, easily toggle among Smartsheet’s flexible view types - Gantt, Calendar, Card, and traditional Grid —
to view work the way you want.

As a cloud-based solution, there’s nothing to install or update. Smartsheet's intuitive interface is easy for
anyone to adopt, and the powerful collaboration features keep everyone on the same page.

At heart, time management isn’t really about managing time at all – it’s about managing yourself. We all have the
same 24 hours each day, but how well we use them is completely down to us.

The best time management techniques improve the ways you work, help control distractions and lock your
concentration. While there are lots of them floating about on the internet, here are the five time management
techniques – and their associated tools –that make the biggest difference.

1. Be intentional: keep a to-do list

Drawing up a to-do list might not seem like a groundbreaking technique, but it’s one of the most powerful ways to
become more productive. The best to-do lists include a variety of tasks: quick and urgent jobs that might be
completed in 10 minutes and bigger, operational tasks that are a work in progress.

Having a set list of tasks helps keep you intentional about what you work on. It effectively lays out what you must
complete – all tasks that pop up outside of it are secondary –and if your mind does wander, a quick glance at your list
reminds you of what you should be doing. And of course, keeping a to-do list allows you to enjoy one of life’s unique
pleasures: visualizing what you want to achieve, and then striking your way through it.

There are lots of apps that help you maximize the power of the to-do list: Todoist is one of the most popular, mainly
thanks to its flexibility (it can be adapted to most workflows) and simplicity. Apple users might also want to check
out Things, a complex yet minimalist app – easy to organize but with no shortage of features.
2. Be prioritized: rank your tasks
If writing a to-do list is the first step towards better time management, prioritising your tasks is the next. It guides you
through the day’s activities in order of importance, ensuring that the tasks that matter most are dealt with first. When
ranking your tasks, you should always prioritize what’s most important to you. Figure out which tasks and activities
are high-value, which will have the most positive effect on you, your work, and your team.

The usefulness of prioritization can’t be overstated – without it, we often end up focusing on work that’s pressing but
not actually that important, simply because a deadline is looming. Prioritization is your most effective defence against
the lure of urgent-yet-inconsequential tasks.

Apps like MyLifeOrganized are to-do lists that factor in things like deadlines and your own prioritizations to help you
calculate what should be top of your list. nTask is another helpful app that allows you to organize, prioritize and
monitor tasks as you go along.

3. Be focused: manage distractions

Despite our best intentions, we all get distracted. From social notifications to talkative colleagues – and the very
human problem of procrastination – actually sitting down and getting things done is almost always harder than it
should be. Given that it takes about 23 minutes to refocus after an interruption, the productive cost of our daily
distractions quickly adds up. So you need to effectively manage your distractions in order to protect your flow and
focus.

While some distractions easy to identify, many people aren’t aware of numerous pressures that fracture their days.
One you have identified the source, you can set controls in place so you decide when to let notifications in. Common
culprits like email, meetings and Slack can be effectively managed with the help of a clear communication framework.
For identifying and quantifying your individual distractions, an activity tracking app like Timely is your best bet – it can
automatically record the time you spend in every work tool and website. If you just need more discipline when your
concentration is waning, apps like StayFocusd and Mindful Browsing can put access restrictions on time-wasting
websites.

4. Be structured: time block your work

A structured schedule is crucial for actually delivering what you set yourself. It helps you protect space for your work
and sets a healthy pressure to actually complete it. Time blocking is one of the most productive ways of doing this, as
it prevents one task from overtaking your entire day and stops you from multi-tasking.

Many of us juggle multiple jobs at the same time, believing we’ll get more done, but in fact the opposite is true; we are
most productive when we focus on one thing at a time. Time blocking is essentially a thoughtful approach to dividing
attention across all your work. Set aside small periods of time for admin-style tasks like email, scheduling and
returning calls, and larger periods for more detailed, in-depth or analytical work.

You just need a simple calendar tool like Week Plan to time block your week in advance. Alternatively, consider using
a calendar app that also tracks what you actually end up achieving, so you can optimize future schedules.

A walk-through guide to time blocking

5. Be self-aware: track your time

Ultimately, you can’t improve how you use your time, without understanding how you actually use it in the first place.
Tracking your time is elementary here – it provides the insight and self-awareness to make effective changes,
surfacing hidden time drains, highlighting inefficient processes and laying out your productive patterns.
Thankfully you no longer have to expend time in order to understand time. Automatic tracking apps can now do the
heavy work for you, recording how you spend your time in a private timeline. There are no timers to stop and start,
and you don’t have to write anything down – every detail is captured in the background while you get on with your
day.

What Is The Best Way to Manage Your Time?

Time management is something that some people struggle at, whereas others are champions of
productivity. No matter the case, to actually master it, you need to know how to do it. And the Internet
is full of tips, tricks, and methods. But they may not always work. You have to find those proven and
used by time management experts.

Time can be tricky. And so, it’s important to know how to fit your work and daily activities into it. If you
struggle with managing your work or want to experiment with your current methods, check out our list
of 15 most effective and proven time management techniques.

1. Plan your day in advance

Planning is the first, the best, and most proven of all time management techniques. Firstly, because it
helps to properly organize your work. Secondly, because it gives you a detailed insight into all the
things you need to do. If you can plan your daily, weekly or monthly tasks, the rest comes easily.

There are many ways to plan and organize your work:

 fancy calendars and personal organizers,

 apps and tools, for example, Nozbe, Evernote, Todoist, etc.,

 to-do-lists,

 post-it-notes, and notepads.

2. E-mails

Checking and answering e-mails is a burdensome task. Nobody likes it, yet everybody does it. Statistics
say that “the average worker spends around 30 hours a week checking email.”

Limit the time you spend on e-mails to the minimum to keep those 30 hours for work. If you check it in
the morning, reply only to those most important, which need an immediate answer. Leave the rest for
breaks between tasks or go through them at the end of the day. Also, make sure to mark those
unimportant messages as “spam” so they don’t dump your inbox.

3. Find your productivity zone

Some people are early birds, whereas others are night owls. We are all different and like to work in
different parts of the day… or night.

Get up super early if you’re most productive in the morning. Or stay up late at night if you prefer to work
in the darkness. But don’t force yourself to change your habits just because it is said that we reach
productivity at certain hours. Whatever works for some people, may not work for you.

4. Eat the frog

Mark Twain said, “If  it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your
job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.” 
It’s all about prioritizing. Do the most important projects first thing in the morning, and when you’re
done, switch to those less pertinent. It will help you better organize workflow and you will become
efficient.

5. Take regular breaks

Working in a continuous process may bring you more harm than good. We need breaks so that our
brain can refresh and then refocus on work.

You can use the pomodoro technique, or go for a short walk. Read a chapter of your favorite book or
make a cup of coffee. Take breaks to increase your time management techniques and feel refreshed.
This will give you a significant productivity boost.

6. Say “no” and delegate

Everybody has their limits. We simply cannot do everything people want us to. It will lead to burnout
and work anxiety. That’s why it’s so important to be assertive and say “no” when people want to assign
you additional tasks.

Remember, there is nothing wrong with refusing to do things you’re not able to do. As well as with
delegating tasks. Especially if there is someone, who can do the work better than you.

7. Focus and block distractions

Notifications, pop up messages, e-mails, colleagues constantly talking to you. It all pulls your attention
away from work.

There are many ways to stay focused. You can put your phone away, turn off social media notifications
or block distracting websites. But the best way is to concentrate and do what you have to do. It’s worth
to limit your presence in social media to the minimum because it takes a lot of your time and doesn’t
bring much value into your life.

8. Goals

Set goals and you will exactly know which direction you’re heading to. Goals are part of the organization
process but they are extremely important in time management.
Goals set your path to reaching success. They are the rungs in the leader to the top. Goals determine
your organization’s main objectives, priorities, and vision.

9. Stop multitasking

I often see job offers which set multitasking as one of the key skills of the candidate. But it’s better to
throw such offer right to the bin. The truth is, multitasking damages our brain. 

It seems that juggling several tasks at one is a great time management technique. In fact, it dramatically
decreases productivity. The study conducted at Stanford  University has shown that “When they’re
[multitaskers] in situations where there are multiple sources of information coming from the external
world or emerging out of memory, they’re not able to filter out what’s not relevant to their current goal.
That failure to filter means they’re slowed down by that irrelevant information.”

10. Allocate your time

Do you know how much time you spend on particular tasks? Gotcha! You’re probably among the
majority of people who have no idea how their daily work looks like in terms of work hours.

If you know how much of your time you allocate to tasks, project, and different activities, you will be
able to better organize your workday and workflow. The simplest way to do it is to use time tracking
software. It will help you precisely predict future estimates and better allocate your time.

Don’t waste any more of your time! Find out where all your time goes with TimeCamp! Sign up for
free!

11. Create a morning routine

What’s the first thing you do when you wake up?  If it’s making a bed, you’re on the right track. But if it’s
checking social media, you’re doing it wrong.

Having your own morning routine will unquestionably power you up for the rest of the day. It’s the first
thing you do in the morning that determines the outcomes you will achieve during the day. Try from
making your bed, then have a healthy breakfast, and leave social media for the end of the day.

12. Exercise

Exercising is a great way to  boost energy levels. It’s a way for the body to get rid of tension caused by
stress. It can also help clean your mind of unnecessary or disturbing thoughts, which only make your
work worse.

Put on your running shoes and go for a jog! You will see how much regular exercising can help in
mastering time management techniques.

13. Tools, tools, tools

In today’s highly developed world, tools are an inseparable part of our work. If you want to be able to
fully use time management techniques, you should implement the following into your daily work:

 time tracking software – helps you to track time of your work and keep a hand on all projects
and numbers.

 to-do-list – enable you to schedule and plan your work week;

 project management software – many time tracking tools have the feature of project
management. Use it to better manage your projects and clients;

 communication tools – Skype, Slack, Zoom, etc. – these are crucial for internal and external
transfer of communication;

 apps helpful in creating habits – it can be a simple calendar but if you’re demanding,
try Habitica. The app helps you achieve your goals and it motivates in a fun way!
14. Reward yourself

Did you finish the task or project you were working on? Good, now take a break and do something for
yourself. Drink a cup of coffee, listen to your favorite music or call your friend.

The little rewards are a great way of motivating yourself. It reminds a little a rabbit chasing the carrot
tied to its nose. It may seem a little odd but when you think about the satisfaction and joy you will feel
after completing your work, you will find out it’s worth it.

15. Communicate

Proper communication can save a lot of your time. If you don’t convey your plans, intentions or
requirements clearly, people won’t understand their tasks. And that will lead to conflicts and
misunderstandings.
Also, don’t forget to use special tools and apps to enhance communication between you and your team
or clients. It’s an easy, fast, and convenient way to transfer messages.

What Time Management Techniques Do You Use?

Do you manage your time properly? Or maybe you still fight with procrastination, laziness or lack of
motivation? Try to use the above, step by step, and you’ll see how your life can change for the better.
But don’t forget to track your time!

Maybe there are other time management techniques which are not on the list? Share your tricks and
tips and let us know what works best for you!