Time management helps you get the best out of your professional and personal life

7 time management tips to help you work smarter, not harder or longer
Photo by Laureen Missaire on Unsplash
“Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.” — Jim Rohn, an American entrepreneur, author, and motivational speaker

Time management is all about working intelligently. I wish I had known this earlier in my career.

It’s about helping you concentrate on the goals and people that really matter to you.

Effective time management increases focus and improves productivity, allowing you to:

improve your self-disciple and quality of work
feel in control and lower your stress levels
reduce the tendency to procrastinate
meet deadlines
enhance your reputation as someone who gets work done on time
frees up time for other fun activities
“Once you have mastered time, you will understand how true it is that most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a year — and underestimate what they can achieve in a decade!” — Tony Robbins, an American author, coach, speaker, and philanthropist

Time management is not about how much time you spend working or how hard you work, but how well you spend that time when you are working.

I have found that you can live your best life by enhancing your time management skills. .

Read also: Do these simple things to have everything you want

Here are seven time management tips to help you work smarter, not harder or longer.

1. Ruthlessly Prioritize

The ABC method is an excellent way to help you ruthlessly prioritize. This technique is simple yet powerful. The power lies in its simplicity.

An “A” task is your most important item for the day. “B” tasks are secondary tasks that are less important and can be worked on when there are no “A” tasks. “C” tasks are nice to get done but not that critical if they don’t happen that day. Start each day with this method and prioritize at the end of the day for tomorrow.

2. Time Block

“You don’t get results by focusing on results. You get results by focusing on the actions that produce results.” — Mike Hawkins, a former American football player

Another time management technique that works is time blocking. This technique is about planning out every minute of your day in advance. You schedule blocks of time on your calendar to focus on a specific task or group of similar tasks. I love this technique because it matches your tasks to your calendar.

This approach helps you determine when you can get to your to-do list. It will also help you set a time limit for these tasks. Once the time block is done, it enables you to begin the next set of tasks. It helps maintain your day because it helps determine how much you can get done that day.

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3. Determine Your Most Productive Hours

Discover what part of the day you are the most productive. For most people, it will be either early in the morning or at night. Create focus time on your calendar where you don’t have meetings or interruptions so you can get stuff done during specific hours of the day.

They learn when they are the most productive and have the most energy. They don’t fill up their calendar with unnecessary meetings and tasks. They know which times of the day they are best for which tasks. For example, I devote writing assignments to the morning and most of my meetings to the afternoon.

4. Eliminate Distractions

“If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.” — Lawrence J. Peter, a Canadian author

In today’s hybrid work world, we have traditional distractions such as phone calls, noisy colleagues, and drop-in conversations and modern distractions like instant messaging and texts that interrupt us many times during the day. Research has found that 99% of employees say they are distracted from their job sometime during the workday.

After we are distracted, it can take a while to refocus. This impacts our work performance, and we lose time. When your attention is fragmented, stress increases, and lowers work performance.

5. Learn to Say “No”

“The oldest, shortest words — ‘yes’ and ‘no’ — are those which require the most thought.” — Pythagoras, a Greek philosopher, and mathematician

There’s an art form of saying “no” politely but firmly. You can master saying “no” and not burning bridges along the way. I have found that saying “no” is one of the most challenging things to do, but critical to being productive.

Saying “no” helps you set healthy boundaries and better manage your workload

Saying “no” is about setting expectations for when you will do something. For example, you can say, “I can do this task, but I can’t get to it until next week.” You may be surprised at how easy saying “no” is when you see the benefits of saying “no.”

6. Do Important Things First

It can be easy to do an urgent task and an unimportant task. Earlier in my career, I loved to check off things on my to-do list and feel like I had made things happen. It can be easy to fall into the trap of doing easy tasks first.

It’s better to prioritize your tasks in order of importance, whether easy or hard. To be more productive, you must do the important things first. You can form bad habits when you don’t put critical items first.

Read also: 7 productivity hacks that will improve your life forever ( must read)

7. Don’t Multitask

“To do two things at once is to do neither.” — Publius Syrus, a Latin writer

Research has found productivity may be reduced by 40% by the mental blocks created when you switch tasks. Multitasking is an enemy of productivity. The constant switching between tasks makes it more difficult to organize our thoughts and filter out non-relevant information.

Multitasking encourages you to do too much at once and do nothing properly

The bottom line is that multitasking reduces the efficiency and quality of work. Give one task your full attention. Finish it and then move on to the next item.

Bringing It All Together

There are seven time management tips that can help you work smarter, not harder or longer. Ruthlessly prioritize, time block, determine your most productive hours, eliminate distractions, learn to say “no,” do important things first, and don’t multitask.

Good time management skills will help you better organize your day. You’ll increase productivity, get more done, reduce stress, and reach your goals. When you master time management, you’ll have time to achieve bigger and better results.

“Time is really the only capital that any human being has, and the only thing he can’t afford to lose.” — Thomas Edison, an American inventor and businessman

CONTRIBUTED BY Matthew Royse

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