How to Work on Time Management | 10 Tips for Time Management

Whether you’re a student, full-time worker, or a parent – time management skills are a must-have if you want to fulfill your responsibilities and get the best out of your time. But managing and holding our focus is one of the biggest challenges we’re facing right now. Our attention span is shortening quickly, and we can not do anything about this. But what we can do is employ the best available strategies and tools for effective time management. 

Here are some of the best strategies on how to work on time management for you to follow – 

1. Track your time
2. Set priorities 
3. Have a To-do list 
4. Eat the Frog 
5. Avoid Distractions 
6. Take Regular Breaks 
7. Do While You Wait 
8. Go to Bed Early
9. Make Quick Decisions 
10. Embrace Downtimes

What is Time Management?

The art of effectively handling your time involves planning your job so that you can use it as wisely as possible. The biggest benefit of excellent time management is the capacity to organize your schedule more so you can carve out time for relaxation and wellness. In addition, it can boost your productivity levels as well.

10 Tips for Time Management

Here are ten tips for time management that you can use to manage your time better and ace your life. 

1. Track Your Time 

You can increase your productivity or better manage your time unless you know what is consuming your time. You can do loads of work in a day, like – house chores, professional work, social media, transportation, cooking etc. To effectively manage your time, you have to just download a time tracker app from the Play Store or the App Store.

You can set categories depending on the things that you’ll be doing during the day and then just track the time. In this way, you will learn the things that are consuming most of your time. You will also be able to make decisions regarding which tasks you want to spend more or less time on. 

2. Set Priority

You can have tons of things to do in a day, but you only get 24 hours. During this time, you have to sleep, do household chores, make dishes, transport and work. There is a high chance that you can not do everything in a day that you’re meant to do. Don’t stress on that. Set priorities to work and mark out the tasks that urgently need your focus. 

Once you set priorities for tasks, you will know the must-do things of the day and this way, you do not have to stress about things that deserve less priority. 

3. Have a To-do List

To-do lists are like maps. Just like a sailor needs a map to know where they will be heading next, we need it too. To-do lists provide us with that leverage. Having a written to-do list will allow you to know the things that you have to do from the very beginning of the day. 

In this way, you can make sure that you aren’t lost doing only the many trivial tasks while ignoring the vital few. You can also get some dopamine release when you revisit the to-do list at the end of the day to find out the things you have accomplished in the day. 

4. Eat the Frog

Some tasks are very easy and require very little energy from us. Some can be very difficult and require us to allocate most of our time and energy to them. Identify the most difficult task of the day and finish it at the very beginning of the day. The task doesn’t have to be very difficult, actually, but it should be something that looks burdensome to you, and you don’t feel like doing it at all. 

This is where you do what you actually need to and ignore what you want to do. As the day moves on, our energy levels begin to decrease, and in the later parts of the day, we can not focus on tasks the same way that we could in the morning. 

That’s why it is critical for you to complete the most difficult task in the morning so that you can do the rest while relaxing. 

5. Avoid Distractions

Distractions are the primary culprits behind procrastination. When we are doing something difficult, our mind tends to search for easy things to distract us from the difficult ones. That’s why logging in and browsing social media sites feel so much comfier when we’re supposed to work on a project or study. 

To make sure you’re not distracted while working, you can – 

• Turn off notifications on every social media app. 
• Set a fixed time later in the day for social media. 
• Say no to unnecessary meetings etc. 

6. Take Regular Breaks

The main intention in trying to manage your time is to make sure you’re making the most of it. But more often than not, we schedule our tasks in such a way that we leave very few gaps between them. We’re humans, not robots. We can not work for 8 to 10 hours straight; it is quite impossible, to be honest. Then why force yourself on it? 

Make sure you’re leaving some moments between your schedules so that your brain can relax for some time. In the break, don’t do or think about anything. Just keep your eyes shut and lie back; you can have a coffee or stand on the balcony as well if that’s what you prefer. 

We guarantee you that after the break, you will be much more efficient with tasks, and your focus levels will be greater. 

7. Do While You Wait

We have to spend a lot of time in transportation and waiting lines. If you think clearly, this can be a good time to finish the tasks that demand less of your attention. You can read the newspaper or that book which you haven’t been able to finish for so long while sitting on a bus or train. Listen to the podcast while you are standing in a waiting line. That 10 – 15 minutes of progress won’t seem much at the beginning. 

But if you do this for a month, you will be surprised to see how many pages you’ve read to how many podcasts you’ve finished listening to. 

8. Go to Bed Early

Okay, we understand that you have tons of things to do in the night, you have projects to finish or lessons to complete, but can’t you do them in the morning? Going to bed late at night results in waking up late in the morning. If you consume the same amount of hours of sleep, then why not sleep and wake up early? 

Besides, going to bed late at night has some effects on our health as well. On the other hand, we can focus more on our tasks in the morning and feel much more energetic. Try this for one month, and you’ll be surprised to see how your focus levels increase. 

9. Make Quick Decisions

If you track your time spent for one month, you will find out that you spend quite a good amount of time thinking about possible future effects of things and keep thinking without making an actual decision. This is also termed – Overthinking. What you want to do is don’t overthink things and just do how you’re supposed to do it. 

This will save a good amount of your time and help you make quick decisions. Most of the decisions we make don’t actually matter in the long term since life is very uncertain. We know that some decisions can be very crucial for your future, like the career path you want to pursue or the person you decide to marry. 

But most of the other decisions aren’t actually that crucial, like the movie you will watch something or the book you will read or the dress you want to wear etc. Stop overthinking things, and you’ll be at peace for a greater amount of time. 

You can also automate decisions that you have to make regularly. In this way, we can save some time in your daily life as well. 

10. Embrace Downtimes

Accept that sometimes you will not feel like doing anything at all. It’s a very normal thing for everyone. Just like the economy, our personal productivity faces ups and downs as well. Don’t stress during your downtimes. Just find and do things that actually make you happy while you’re doing it. After a while, you’ll see everything becoming much easier, and your productivity will come back on track. 

Time Management Tools

It’s simpler to maintain focus on the essential things and finish your tasks on time when you manage your time well. You simply cannot avoid time management if you have any goals to pursue, and this applies in both the corporate world and your personal life. Online time management tools can assist you in achieving your goals on time. Here we list down some of the best time management tools that you can use for free. 

1. RescueTime

In order to be more productive, you must determine where you devote the majority of your time. Therefore, this well-known time management program will reveal just where you are devoting the most time.

Additionally, you can design notifications and reminders. RescueTime’s capability to track off-site occurrences is one of its distinctive features. You can make use of it, for example, to keep track of telephone calls and appointments.

To begin or end the timer on your mobile device or desktop app, all you need to do is tap the time clock icon.

2. Evernote

You aren’t alone if you sometimes feel that your messiness wastes your time. By enabling you to take notes and arrange them in one location, Evernote is there to help you in managing your time.

Using the app, you may make tasks and lists of things to do. Additionally, you can save a piece of content inside of a note using an Internet clipper tool if you require to preserve it as part of your study for an upcoming assignment. You may search through your notes in Evernote to locate exactly what you’re looking for.

3. Remember The Milk

Do you require frequent reminders of what needs to be done and when? Remember, Milk fills a need that we may all benefit from on occasion. Alerts can be sent to you via cell phone messages, Facebook, email, and other channels. Additionally, Remember the Milk can sync with other programs like Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, and even Google Drive. You may do this to keep your calendars and every appointment you have up to date so you never skip a beat.

4. Monday.com

A one-stop productivity tool is Monday.com. You can keep track of your time, make lists of things to do, and even see how projects are progressing in real-time. Additionally, Monday.com offers a time monitoring tool that allows you to manually enter the duration or turn the alarm on and off as needed.

For groups who utilize different platforms but want a place of their own for working out of, Monday.com is an excellent solution because it is simple to integrate with all of the additional software or services that you use.

There are just two seats accessible in the application’s trial version. You have to shell out at least 8 EURO per person each month if you need to use it as a member of a bigger group.

5. Notion

Take Notion as one single portal with a bunch of productivity tools that will assist you maintain your ideas and work organized. You, plus the others, can work together, make notes and records, and develop a common management area to serve as a ground for all of your project administration requirements.

Lists of tasks, management of projects, making notes, spreadsheets as well as other softwares can all be replaced by Notion. It makes sure you stay on top of your organizing and time management while saving you both money and time.

6. Spark

Email usage is still increasing despite the fact that we have access to hundreds of other communication alternatives. No matter whether email plays a major part in your work productivity depends on how well you manage and monitor it. You’ll be surprised by the amount of time that may be lost with email if there is no framework or technology to help you keep organized.

Spark provides a variety of features, including the ability to snooze emails and only receive crucial email notifications. Additionally, you may email your assignment manager to add something to your list of things to do, make a quick response using a template, get reminders to check up on messages and plan future replies to specific emails.

7. MyLifeOrganized (MLO)

Lists of things to do plus maintaining a method to organize your chores are great time management strategies. Even with many apps and strategies, individuals can become overwhelmed. MyLifeOrganized can help with this.

This work management application assists you in concentrating on what you ought to be concentrating on in order to achieve your goals. MyLifeOrganized is a great time-scheduling program for concentrated work. It creates lists of tasks with items of importance for your immediate focus, allowing you to follow your progress systematically.

8. Alarmy

Getting up early to set aside some quality time with oneself and prepare for the coming day is a key component of dominating your day. Alarmy can make it difficult to fall asleep or sleep in by presenting you with a variety of activities to accomplish before your alarm goes off.

You may engage in memory games, practice math, snap photos, hunch over and do a variety of other activities. You have been awake, and your brain is engaged by the moment you finish the assignment. Other amazing tools for gaining insights include adjusting your vocals and documenting the way you feel. Alarmy will help you get the most out of each day.

9. BeTimeful

Let’s be honest: how often have you been to Facebook in search of a particular thing just to wind up enjoying a video of beluga whales performing somersaults? The number of times we have gone to Twitter to converse with a buddy only to find ourselves reading around the updates for 20 minutes?

BeTimeful’s free plugin addresses this issue. Instead of hiding the whole website and making your desire to visit it further, which is called fear of missing out, it simply eliminates distracting components like newsfeeds and recommended movies while you’re in productive mode, keeping you focused. It also interacts with your personal calendars, such as Google’s Calendar, and includes its own integrated calendar. 

10. Trello

Trello is a task management/time management application with a Kanban-style graphical user interface. Therefore, for those who don’t get around to the card-like perspective of activities inside the project, the control panel can rapidly become overwhelming and cluttered, so this isn’t a tool for anyone.

Trello, on the other hand, is ideal for small groups. It also provides an extensive free plan with up to 10 panels per group. The available space is a little restricted (just 10 MB for each file), but it’s a time management tool you wouldn’t want to skip out on.

Benefits of Time Management

We gave you a big list of how to work on time management skills. But what are your incentives for mastering time management tips? Here they are – 

1. Anxiety-free Life

To be honest, time is the most precious possession. We are all aware of this, and that’s why it is vital to effectively handle your leisure and allow adequate time for leisure tasks, interests, and personal life. If not, you risk causing injury to your psychological well-being and placing yourself under more pressure than you can take.

Since we all require time to relax, review all aspects of your daily routine and devise an approach that will give you the greatest advantages in the shortest period of time.

As how well you manage time improves, a greater amount of free time will be available for you to use as you like.

2. Achieve Work-life Balance

Both excessive labour and excessive relaxation might be detrimental to your general well-being. Among the main advantages of developing your capacity for time management is being able to strike a balance which will ensure you get the maximum out every minute without going overboard.

One of the best methods for you to attain the ideal balance between your personal and professional lives is through excellent time management skills.

3. Enable new Opportunities

An effective time management strategy produces greater possibilities and less time spent on pointless activities. One of the most important traits that companies look for is effective time management. Any firm would find it extremely advantageous to have the capacity to schedule and organize work.

Conclusion 

Life offers us a limited amount of time. But we can get a lot done if we manage and use our time wisely. Effective time management strategies will assist you in doing that. Use the time management tips and tools that we provided above to make your days much more productive.

Frequently Asked Questions