Four Powerful Time Management Strategies That Will Transform Your Day
Whether or not you’re into the idea of using time management strategies to run your life, you use them anyway.
It's just a question of how effective you are.
How well do you manage your time?
Well, it depends on the degree to which you value it, and the techniques, tools and resources you use to make the most of it.
It's stressful if you're struggling to manage your workload on a day to day basis, especially if it's not for the want of trying.
It's more likely to be the way you're managing it.
If you feel overwhelmed or out of control, stop, breath and read on.
Below are four highly effective time management strategies that you can use today.
But first, an important question...
What makes them so good?
- They’re simple.You won’t need a Ph.D to work out what to do with these.
- They’re universal. Based on evergreen principles rather than the latest fad or fashion, you won’t ever have to update them.
- They’re a bit uncomfortable. Let’s be honest. Anything that improves your circumstances takes a bit of time, thought and effort. It may even mean you have to step out of your comfort zone. The trick is to step out bit by bit.
- They work. They’ve worked for me, they’ve worked for others, and they’ll work for you. Maybe not always at first -- practice makes perfect -- but stick with them and you’ll soon notice the difference in your life.
4 Time Management Strategies
Okay, so here we go -- four powerful time management strategies that will help you manage your work efficiently and effectively:
1. Plan for Today
Planning really is the key to success when it comes to managing your day. It makes you more effective, because what you write down will probably be much more important to you than what you react to throughout the day if you don’t.
Drawing up a realistic list of what you want to do each day means you focus more on what matters and drift less towards what doesn’t.
Any planning is worth the effort it took to do, usually many times over. Keep your planning simple at first. In fact, keep your planning simple as much as possible.
A good strategy is to plan your time according to the amount of unscheduled time you expect to have available.
An Example...
Let’s say you look through your day and, after meetings, events, appointments and other commitments have been accounted for, you estimate you have 60 minutes.
If you know how to plan your day you can make the most of your unscheduled hour by time boxing your current projects and tasks into it.
Leave a ‘buffer’ (maybe 10 minutes or so) to soak up the unforeseen but inevitable distractions and disruptions.
2. Set some Limits
Setting limits on what you do each day is one of the most effective time management strategies you can employ.
It can take a bit of self-discipline if it’s something you’re doing -- working on a report or doing routine tasks -- or some assertiveness if it’s being run by someone else, such as a meeting or event. But setting a limit on whatever you do gives you more control over your day.
It also has the effect of enhancing your focus and creativity.
For example, if you have children, notice what happens when you say “Would you tidy your room?” Compare it to “Would you tidy your room for five minutes?”
Limits work particularly well when you practice creative procrastination.
Deliberately leaving things until the last possible minute can be a dangerous game, but if you know how to play it, you can make some real gains with your time.
Work tends to expand to fill the time available for it, so the idea is that you set shorter time limits on tasks.
This is known as Parkinson's Law, and it’s one of the best time management strategies for managing yourself effectively.
3. Batch Your Tasks
This is a great way to make better use of your day. You're so much more efficient when you batch similar non-urgent and repetitive tasks together.
Here are some examples:
- Email - Learn how to use email so that it doesn’t dictate your day.
- Filing - Create a file for all the documents that you want to put back or create a place for, then do them all at once.
- Invoices - Schedule a regular day on which to process them together.
- Meals - Making dinner? Make several! Pop them in the freezer for when you want them.
- Phone calls - Save them all up for the end of the day so each call is shorter.
- Photocopying - As for filing.
- Reading - As for filing. Pick what to read according to time available and intuition.
- Social media - Several services allow you to schedule updates to whatever you use.
Whether you’re at home, school or work, there will be ways to benefit by batching tasks.
Step back and look at what you routinely do (a time management chart is a good way to do this) - you’ll soon find the opportunities to do it are everywhere.
Keep practising your ability to do this.
It takes some effort to set up some simple systems to process these things, but, as with planning, that effort is more than compensated for by the results you’ll get.
4. Touch It Once
Whenever you start a task or project, do your best to focus single-mindedly on seeing it through to completion.
This habit of touching it once or 'single handling' is one of the key time management strategies to learn if you want to improve your productivity.
Whatever is is, work at completing it with the minimum amount of distractions or disruptions. Doing this reduces the amount of stopping, starting and re-learning you have to do to pick up a task again.
You don't have to constantly keep putting down and picking up the tools for the task.
This is a principle to aim for, not a stick to beat yourself with if you don't do it.
In reality, some tasks and many projects won't get done in one go.
The point is, knowing that single handling works so well can motivate you to spend the necessary time on tasks and projects so you don't have to keep coming back to finish them.
* * *
Try these time management strategies today, and see what difference they make to your efficiency and effectiveness.
If you stick with them and internalize them as habits, you’ll notice a snowball effect in terms of your productivity.
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